


Mirror

by Jaywings



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Gen, POV Alternating, Portals, alternate personalities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-08 09:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 47,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaywings/pseuds/Jaywings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zim builds a portal in his newest plan for world domination, but not everything turns out as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue and Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is an in-progress story that's been up on deviantART and fanfiction.net for awhile. I'm posting the prologue and first chapter together here because the prologue is extremely short.

Prologue

* * *

Many miles from Earth, the gargantuan Irken Massive piloted slowly through the inky black emptiness of outer space. Other spacecrafts followed, looking tiny as they tailed the enormous ship. Inside the Massive, long, spindly green fingers twitched against a porthole and a pair of purple eyes gazed out at the stars.

"Think it'll work?" Tallest Purple asked without turning around.

Tallest Red sighed wearily. "For the thousandth time. It had  _better_  work! But nothing else we've tried ever has, so I can't help but wonder if this will be the same."

"Well, we've never tried anything as ingenious as this," Tallest Purple argued. He scarfed down a donut, licking the sticky glaze and donut crumbs from his fingertips.

"Ingenious?" Tallest Red scoffed. "Are you kidding? This isn't ingenious! This is stupid! It's completely transparent! There's no way he won't find out. He'll see right through it! He'll-" Suddenly he paused as if realizing what he was saying. "Oh. Right. It's  _Zim_  we're talking about. Never mind, then." He and Tallest Purple burst out laughing. "Can you imagine? Me, ranting on like that... I forgot who we were talking about for a second..."

"My Tallest!" a small female Irken ran into the room and saluted. "We have just received another message from your anonymous source. It said that everything is going as planned." She paused. "Um... if you don't mind me asking... what does that mean, exactly?  _What's_  going as planned?

Tallest Purple waved her away. "That's for us to know and you to find out!"

"Yes, My Tallest!" The little Irken saluted again, then dashed off.

"Always in a hurry, that one..." Tallest Red mused when she had gone. "She might be up to something. You!" He pointed to a random Irken working on a computer. "Insignificant Computer-Hacking Drone! Go keep a watch on her."

The Irken looked flustered. "Actually, I'm... I'm not a Computer Hacker. I'm piloting the ship."

"That was an order, Soldier!" Tallest Purple shouted.

"Um, I'm not a  _Soldier_ , either. I told you, I'm-"

Tallest Red glared at him. "Just go!"

"Yes, My Tallest!" The Irken saluted meekly and abandoned his post, running off.

"Well," Tallest Purple said to his co-ruler, lifting up an Irken brand soda can. "I propose a toast. To Zim's death!"

"To Zim's death!" Tallest Red agreed, taking a soda for himself. The two leaders clinked their soda cans together, then downed their drinks in two gulps.

"Augh!" Tallest Purple cried, dropping his empty soda can and clutching his head. "BRAIN FREEZE!"

As they spoke, the pilotless Massive flipped upside down.

* * *

Chapter 1: The Cooties Shall Rule

* * *

_7:05 A.M. Well, nothing terrible has happened yet. I'm not turning into bologna or having_

**Ping**.

_weird dreams about floating shoes. Of course, it's still early morning and we have to make it through the rest of the day. I'm sure that Zim is_

**Ping. Ping**.

_planning something awful. He always is, and then I have to take the time to go and stop him. It's really annoying. It's strange that nothing has happened yet, though. Maybe Zim's just not up yet. Do Irkens sleep? Unknown. MAKE A NOTE OF THAT._

**Ping. Ping.**

_7:10 A.M. I just got a cereal bar from the cabinet. It looks all right (just really unhealthy. Oh well). Maybe Zim hasn't done anything to it. That seems unlikely, though. I'll have to_

**Ping ping ping PINGPINGPING**.

_go down to Dad's lab and scan it to make sure. Just like every morning. Skool is starting soon, and hopefully I'll be able to get some real information today on Zim's plans. Yesterday I installed a small microphone under his desk so I can hear any of his evil mutterings about his evil plans that he's going to commit evilly._

**PINGPINGPINGPING**

_I just hope the janitor doesn't get rid of the microphone. Then again, he never cleans the gum off from under the desks so I can't see how a microphone would be any_

**PING PING PING**

_different. In fact, yesterday I was dismayed to find a huge, disgusting wad of chewed gum under my desk. I'm sure Zim put it there. Funny, you'd think that stuff would make his head explode or at least painfully melt his teeth or something if he tried to chew it. But no, of_  course  _not. I need to figure out exactly_

**PING PING PING PING PING**

"Gaz!" Dib said irritably, pausing in his writing. "What's wrong with that thing? It's making annoying pinging noises."

Gaz kept her eyes glued to the screen of her Game Slave 4 or whatever it was she had these days. "It's  _supposed_  to. That means it's working."

"Well, turn down the volume or something." Dib shifted into a more comfortable sitting position on the couch. "Can't you see I'm trying to work on my journal? That noise is really distracting."

Gaz finally looked up from her game and peered at him. "So... you're keeping a diary now?"

"I said  _journal_ , Gaz.  _Journal_. Not diary. Now please, I'm trying to concentrate on this!" He went back to scribbling in his blue notebook. Gaz rolled her eyes and turned back to her game, ready to once again brutally kill that stupid online player who kept coming back for more.

"Good morning, children!" The floating screen that the siblings interacted with more than their actual father drifted over to them. Membrane faced them from the screen and continued to talk. "Isn't it a lovely morning? I just needed to tell you that I will be away for a few more days because I'll be observing the transit of Venus that starts tonight. Keep a watch for it! Now, I trust that you are both ready for Skool. Remember, education is vital for the growth of young minds and, as the saying goes, a mind is a terrible thing to-" The recorded message suddenly broke off and fizzed with static.

"What's the transit of Venus?" Gaz asked her brother, but didn't really care about the answer.

Dib shrugged. "I dunno. I've never heard of it before. But Dad's right. We'd better go, Gaz." He stashed his notebook in his bag and hopped off the couch. "Don't want to be late."

Gaz gritted her teeth. " _You_  go. I'll wait awhile and then come when you're at least a block away."

Dib sighed. "It's no good to pretend we're not related. We sit together at lunch, Gaz."

"I'm. Not. Going. To. Skool. With. You." Gaz didn't even turn around. Not wanting to be caught late for Ms. Bitters' class again (he shuddered at the thought), Dib left the house and ran down the street. He considered taking the bus but then thought better of it. Everyone on board was probably still a little upset about that recent... "incident." No, it was better to walk. He set off at a brisk pace, wondering what horrors awaited him in class today.

* * *

"Class, today's lesson is about the Great Fire of London in 1666." Ms. Bitters seemed to levitate above the floor as she began her lecture. "It burned through the city like a great tidal wave... a tidal wave of great evil flames, burning through three quarters of the city. Burning, burning, burning..."

Dib absentmindedly doodled a sketch of Zim's house on fire. He glanced across the row of desks at the alien, who appeared to be trying to make something with origami.

"...burning, burning... causing destruction. And DEATH. Lots of death. You could hear the horrified screams from miles away. The fire lasted for three days before they could put it out. It all started when a baker in Pudding Lane carelessly forgot to put out the fire from his stove-"

"Hah! Foolish human," Zim muttered with a smirk. Dib jumped at the sudden crackling in the small earpiece he was wearing. Aw man, he'd forgotten about the microphone under Zim's desk! Hastily he reached up to his ear to turn down the volume.

"Dib! What's that in your ear?" Ms. Bitters barked. "Are you listening to...  _MUSIC_?" She spat out the word like it left a bad taste in her mouth.

"N-no, Ms. Bitters," Dib stammered. He surreptitiously removed the earpiece and clenched it in his fist. "Sorry. Won't happen again."

Ms. Bitters sniffed, then continued on with the lesson. Dib breathed a sigh of relief and fingered the earpiece, not wanting to risk putting it back in his ear. In hindsight, it probably would have been better to bug something other than Zim's desk. It wasn't as if the alien ever said anything that was too quiet to be heard by the rest of the class. And why would Zim talk to himself about evil plans? In class? Silently berating himself for being so stupid, Dib stowed the earpiece back in his bag.

* * *

The lesson dragged on. And on. Typical  _Earth_  class. Zim felt like he would die of boredom. As if he cared about some fire that took place centuries ago, in a city he'd never heard of and a country he had nothing to do with! When he conquered Earth, there'd be giant fires  _everywhere_.

His eyes darted to the clock at the front of the room. Ten minutes until lunch! Then it would be half an hour stuck in a room filled with unwashed children devouring...  _food_. That stuff smelled even worse then the humans did, which was saying something. Zim looked away from the clock and studied his hands for awhile, completely ignoring the creepy teacher's rasping voice. He looked up at the clock again and jumped in surprise because it seemed to have gone backwards. What was  _wrong_  with this class? Did it have its own time zone? He glanced over at Dib, who was scribbling something in a notebook. Probably taking notes. FOOLISH EARTH-BOY! Irken Invaders had no need to take notes. Their memories were unmatched. Anything that an Invader read or heard was permanently stored in-oh, wait. Zim realized that he hadn't been paying attention to the teacher. What if this material was on a future test? He sat up straighter and focused his attention on the lesson. Well, Invaders  _did_  have incredibly good memories. But they had to actually be listening first.

The lunch bell finally rang and Zim sagged in relief, glad to be able to get out of the stifling classroom. Not wanting to be met with a flurry of vicious taunts from Dib, he hurried into the hall before the stupid human could get up.

The lunchroom was crowded, noisy, and smelled disgusting as usual. Zim went through the line without really paying attention to what he was buying. It was all the same, anyway. Glop, glop, more glop,  _acidic_ glop... ooh! Peas! ...Floating in yellowish glop. Dis _gusting_.

He sat down at his usual table and stared at his "food," beginning his routine poking and prodding. One thing on his plate was completely unidentifiable. And was it just his imagination, or was it wriggling?

"This is horrible!" Zim said aloud. "I shouldn't have to put up with this Earth  _gruel_!" He reached behind his back to rummage in his PAK, pulled out a delicious Irken sandwich, and took a bite of that instead. Hah! He felt as if he had won a small victory against the organ-melting acid that the cafeteria tried to pass off as nutrition.

"Where'd you get that sandwich,  _Zim_?" someone said. Zim didn't have to look up to know who it was.

"I bought it," he said pointedly as Dib came up with his own tray loaded with food. "I bought it right over there. Ask anyone. Anyone!"

"Oh,  _please_ ," Dib scoffed. "That wasn't made by humans!"

"I suppose it's an  _alien_  sandwich?" Zim sighed. "Nonsense. It is NORMAL. Just like me. See?" He took another large bite of the sandwich to prove how normal he was.

"Zim, it's got that creepy Irken insignia on it," Dib pointed out. Zim glanced at his sandwich, then quickly turned it upside down to hide the design.

"What? No it doesn't! That's, uh... that's the logo for my favorite cartoon! From the cartooning channel! Now go away so I can finish my normal sandwich and enjoy my time in this filthy eating room."

Dib stood for a moment. Then he scowled and said, "I'm watching you, Zim. And whatever evil thing you're planning, I'm going to stop it!"

_Oh, shut up,_  Zim thought as Dib went back to his own table.

* * *

_12:11 P.M. Zim is definitely up to something. Something_  evil.  _I don't know what it is yet but I'm going to find out. And today during our history lesson he was making origami. What kind of evil space alien monster makes origami? Perhaps it was some bizarre alien ritual. MAKE A NOTE OF THAT. Nothing good could come from that._

_The microphone thing didn't work. Maybe if I bugged Zim's electronic backpack? Or his stupid robot pet. I might get some more useful information that way._

Dib stopped writing and put his pen down. He was going to need a new microphone. Too bad he had left his extras at home. Thoughtfully he finished off his lunch, trying to ignore the noise from Gaz's video game. It was pinging again. Right next to him.

"How do you get away with playing that in school?" he asked. He couldn't even wear an earpiece without the teacher thinking he was listening to an iPod.

"No one's asked me to stop," Gaz replied. Dib had nothing to say to that.

* * *

Gym class that day was particularly bad. The class lined up and the team captains, Zita and Torque Smackey, chose the people they wanted on their teams. Gradually the class dwindled until only Zim and Dib were left unchosen.

Torque sighed. "Zim, I guess," he said.

Zim brightened. "You should be honored to have ZIM on your team!" he announced, marching over to them.

"That's everyone!" The class cheered, and began to race off to play basketball.

"Hold up!" the coach shouted. "You're forgetting someone." She motioned to Dib, who was standing there feeling awkward.

Zita groaned. "Aw, but he's got cooties!" she complained. Standing in line with Torque's team, Zim jumped, his eyes wide.

"Well, someone has to choose him!" The coach folded her arms. The class looked at each other for a minute. Then they grabbed a basketball and raced off to play. The coach turned to Dib. "Looks like you get a zero for your participation grade today," she said, making a mark on her clipboard.

"That's not fair!" Dib protested. "You're giving me an F just because they didn't choose me for one of their teams? Isn't there something else I can do?"

"Yes. You can go sit over there by the wall." The coach pointed to show Dib exactly which wall to sit by, then left to referee the game. Dib leaned against the wall and exhaled slowly. It didn't surprise him that no one wanted him on their team, but he  _was_  upset that the coach was giving him an F for it.

* * *

"Hey! Hey! Pass it over here!" Zim shouted, ready to catch the ball if it was thrown his way. His teammates-and everyone on the other team, too-completely ignored him. "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Pass it to me! I'm open!"

"Move it!" someone shouted as they came by with the ball, shoving Zim out of the way. He stumbled but, like a true Invader, didn't fall. It infuriated that the humans weren't passing him the ball. He had no idea what he would do with it if it ever came into his possession, but these inferior beings should pass it to him anyway. Also, he couldn't help but think about what the ugly human girl had said. Something about... what had she called them? Cooties? They sounded sinister. They were probably some form of germ. Possibly even  _worse_  than germs! But he had to be sure. He grabbed a passing human's arm and pulled him to the side.

"Hey!" the kid shouted.

"Quiet, Dirt-Monkey!" Zim snarled. "I need information. Tell me everything you know about  _cooties_  or face the wrath of ZIM!"

The kid looked confused. "Cooties?" he asked.

"Yes! Cooties! Are they germs? Do they cause some form of communicable disease? Can they be destroyed? Are they common? ARE THEY DANGEROUS?"

"Dangerous?" the kid asked. "Um, no. I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe. Probably. I think so. Yes. Definitely!"

"I KNEW IT!" Zim shouted. "And of course the  _Dib_  would have them. He probably plans to infect and destroy me with them. But I'll show him. He won't make a corpse out of me! I AM ZIM!"

"Uh, can I go now?" the kid said, looking a little terrified. Zim let go of him.

"Yes. You've been very helpful. When the Earth is conquered, I'll make sure to give you a candy bar before you're destroyed."

"Thanks!" The kid grinned, then ran off to rejoin his team. Zim rubbed his hands together gleefully. Now that he knew what the Dib human was planning, it would be simple to put a stop to it and, even better, turn Dib's own plan against him! But this would require stealth. And, most of all, secrecy.

Zim marched over to where Dib sat, writing in that blue notebook. "Dib!" he shouted. "I know what you're planning. Well, your cootie infestation will never bring down an INVADER!"

Dib looked completely blank. "...cooties?"

"YES, you smelly meat-brain of... meat! Cooties! Those dreaded germs that cause horrible diseases!"

"Oh,  _cooties_!" Dib said with a faint snicker. "You mean what Zita said? Yeah, we Earthlings are absolutely terrified of cooties. Those little things are made of polluted water. They'll crawl inside you head and lay eggs in your brain, and gradually eat you from the inside out. And I'm gonna release them inside your house!" Though he tried to control it, Dib was visibly shaking with laughter now. Zim folded his arms.

"You're lying," he said. "I get it. You do not possess the 'cooties' at all, do you. WELL! Now that I know this great Earth weakness, I shall EXPLOIT it by finding these cooties!"

He turned and marched off, not hearing Dib's muttered comment, "Yeah. You do that, Zim."

Zim was heading back to the basketball court when he felt it. Something shoved him, jostling his PAK.

"YOU DARE TO-" Zim whirled around furiously with his fists clenched, but there was no one there. "Wha-" Dib was still sitting by the wall, writing. The coach and the other human children were still on the basketball court. Zim glanced around wildly, again and again. He rubbed his eyes. But he still couldn't see anyone. Uneasily he backed away, then ran back to the basketball court. Not that he had any intention of joining the humans in their ridiculous, pointless game. He just wanted to avoid the teacher's suspicion.

He grinned to himself, forgetting about the strange occurrence of the invisible push. He was already forming ideas on how to unleash cooties on the entire planet, forcing all the humans to their knees!


	2. Explosions R Cool

_2:45 P.M. Wow, I've been writing in this thing all day! If I keep this up I'll fill it in a week! I knew that getting a new journal for my observations and notes was a good idea. Apparently Zim's new plan for world conquest is to destroy us by unleashing cooties over the Earth. I would tell him that cooties don't exist, but this is going to be hilarious. And then when his plan fails miserably I'll expose him as an alien to the world._

"Class, we spent the morning discussing the Great Fire of London. I'm assigning a ten-page research paper about the fire. Go ahead and start writing it now. I don't want to hear a peep out of you for the rest of the day." Ms. Bitters drifted over to her desk and sat down behind it.

Dib glanced around at his classmates. Some were rifling through their notes from the day but most were playing tic-tac-toe with their neighbors. Dib raised his hand.

"Yes, Dib?" Ms. Bitters asked wearily.

"Um... when's this paper due?" Dib asked.

Ms. Bitters raised an eyebrow. "For you, Dib? Tomorrow."

The class snickered at Dib's stunned look. "But... but Ms. Bitters," he said, "that's not nearly enough time! I haven't done any research, and I need to write an outline and a rough draft..."

Ms. Bitters wasn't impressed. "Keep talking and I'll make it due in five minutes," she snapped. Dib shut his mouth obediently and stared at his desk. "Any other questions?" Ms. Bitters asked.

"Yes!" Zim said. "Must this 'research paper' be written in the  _human_  language?"

Ms. Bitters stared at him for a moment. Then she said, "No more talking!" and sat staring at the class like a vulture waiting for its prey to die. Dib frantically searched through his papers but knew he didn't have any notes on the Great Fire. Throughout the lesson he had been writing in his journal instead of paying attention. He'd have to do all of his research at home on his laptop. In the meantime, however, he could write in his journal some more!

* * *

As usual, Zim walked home rather than ride the smelly bus. Humans and their stupid wheeled land vehicles! According to Irken standards, if a vehicle couldn't fly and/or shoot lasers, then it wasn't worth bothering with.

"GIR? GIR!" he called when he walked in through his front door. "Any news?" Every day he checked to see if anyone had come by the house.

"I learned how to skip rocks!" an excited robot voice replied. Zim ducked a millisecond before a stone sailed over his head and crashed into the television, causing a shower of blue sparks. GIR ran into the room, searching for the rock he had thrown.

"I  _meant_ , did anyone come by today?" Zim asked in frustration, ignoring the smoking television. "We can't afford any breaches in security!"

"Nope! House's been  _all_  empty!" GIR said. "I bin watchin' the videos!" He opened a laptop that had been sitting on the couch and showed Zim a YouTube video of a cartoon dog dancing.

"Uh huh." Zim quickly lost interest and headed down to his lab. GIR found his rock and followed, sticking the dirty black stone in his mouth. Zim stopped in front of his computer consoles and rubbed his hand over them. For the first time that day he could finally relax. Well, as long as he ignored GIR. He pulled out his contact lenses and yanked off the itchy black wig. He hoped he could conquer Earth soon, so he would never have to wear that stupid disguise again.

"Now... for my new plan!" Zim laughed and immediately began designs for his idea. He needed a way to pull all of the cooties in existence into one place, so he could spread them over the Earth as he saw fit. Hm... a portal! He would build a portal, so he could simply open it to the World of Cooties. He was fairly sure there was such a world. There  _had_  to be. The portal idea was ingenious! This was undoubtedly his best plan yet. And the Dib human didn't suspect a thing!

* * *

Dib was torn. Should he watch the new episode of Mysterious Mysteries, which had had previews promising ground-breaking discoveries in paranormal study, or work on his research paper? Well, the paper  _was_  due tomorrow. And he could always tape the show. Using all the self control he could muster, he hit "record" and turned off the TV. Then he grabbed a snack, plugged his laptop into an outlet so it wouldn't run out of power, and started working.

" _My_  teacher never gives us research papers," Gaz said when she came into the room and saw what Dib was working on. When he didn't reply she went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. "Well, I'm ordering pizza from Bloaty's."

Dib turned around. "But you just ordered pizza yesterday!" he said.

"What's your point?"

"Well, don't we have some left over?"

"Yeah. So?" Gaz finished dialing the number and put in her order. Dib shrugged and went back to his work. If Gaz was set on getting another pizza, he didn't want to be the one to stop her!

The evening passed uneventfully. Dib even managed to get two slices of pepperoni without Gaz threatening to tear his limbs off, which was something. She must have been in an exceptionally good mood. Or maybe she felt sorry for him, although that seemed unlikely.

Dib worked steadily and by 11:30 he felt he had a decent enough rough draft. It was two pages short, though. He picked up his pen and chewed on the cap. This was insane! He somehow had to write two more pages, then edit it and make a Works Cited page. And he couldn't think of a single thing more that he could write about the Great Fire.

Putting his laptop aside he stood and stretched, then headed into the kitchen to find something that might keep him awake-no matter how hard he tried to focus, he could feel himself nodding off. He opened the fridge, took a look inside, and groaned. Of  _course_  the only soda they had at the moment was caffeine-free. He closed the fridge with a snap and opened the cabinet instead. Coffee? Blech. He hated the stuff. But if it was the only thing that could keep him awake, he had to try it. He set up the coffee maker and went back to his work. Soon the smell of brewing coffee filled the downstairs. It smelled delicious, but Dib wondered if he'd be able to make himself drink any.

At around 2:00 in the morning he hadn't gotten much closer to being done. Also, he had caught himself dozing off more than once. With a resigned sigh he got up and went back to the kitchen, where the coffee stood ready. He poured some into a mug.

"It'll keep me awake," he told himself, and choked down a sip. Okay... so it wasn't  _that_  bad. But it still wasn't good, either. He was about to take another reluctant gulp when he paused, thinking he had heard something in the garage. He stood listening, then put his mug down and cautiously made his way over to the garage door. There it was again! Two thought's flashed through his mind-either Tak's ship was acting up again (which would be a HUGE problem, because it now had the ability to fly), or Bigfoot had gotten back in. Either way, Dib had to get out there. He ran to the coffee table in the living room and grabbed his camera along with its memory chip, which was lying next to it. Just in case.

Quietly, he went back to the kitchen, opened the door, and stepped into the garage.

* * *

Minutes later, far from Earth, a computer screen on the Irken Massive blinked and a new message popped up.

"Hey, it's our anonymous source!" Tallest Red said, peering at the message.

Tallest Purple hurried over. "Ooh! What's it say? And... uh... who  _is_  our anonymous source?"

Tallest Red facepalmed. "Nobody knows. That's why they're  _anonymous_."

"Right. Right. Oh, I knew  _that_!" Tallest Purple silently added the word "anonymous" to his ever-growing vocabulary. "But... but shouldn't we know who they are? I mean, we  _are_  the rulers."

Tallest Red shrugged. "Well, as long as whoever this is follows our orders and helps to rid us of the disgraceful plague of the Irken Empire that is Zim, I really don't care who they are."

"Fair enough," Tallest Purple replied, and together they read the short message.

'Stand by for new instructions, My Tallest. There's been a slight change of plan. All hail the Irken Empire! :)'

Tallest Purple stared at the message. "Do we know anyone who knows how to use smileys?" he asked.

* * *

While Dib spent an all-nighter trying to get his paper done, Zim worked all night on his portal. He was confident that this time his plan was going to work.

He had found a way to amplify the power of his portal at least tenfold. He had to work quickly, because soon a planetary alignment, which he had learned about on the Internet, would begin. The humans called it a "transit of Venus," where the planet Venus crossed between the Earth and the sun. Apparently it was a rare event. Zim had used his telescope to check the planet, and found that the transit carried enough power to run the portal by itself. He planned to harness the power and use it to make his portal stronger.

Zim finished his preparations seconds before the transit, which would last for several hours, would begin.

"This is it, GIR!" Zim said to his robot. "Soon the vilest germs that the Earth has ever seen will be at my command!"

"You gots COOTIES!" GIR squeaked. Zim shook his head.

"No, GIR. I don't have them... yet. But with this portal-" Suddenly the telescope beeped and Zim pressed his eye to it. "YES! It's starting, GIR!" He reached over and pulled a large lever. "Yes... and when the portal opens... the dawn of Earth's destruction will be upon us!"

"Destruction is fun!" GIR cheered.

The portal sprung open on the wall. It seemed to bloom out of thin air, flashing brightly, a glowing spiral of various shades of yellow.

"Portals are swirly..." GIR said in awe.

"It's quite a sight, isn't it, GIR?" Zim said. "Now to find those cooties!" He pressed a button on the console that controlled the portal. Nothing happened. Zim paused, then pressed the button again. And again. "Broken!" he shouted. "GIR, go up to the house. Your malfunctioning circuits must be interfering with the portal or something!" He pressed the button once more, but this seemed to be more than the machine could handle. There was a low rumbling sound. Zim backed away from the controls. "GIR, I think-" Before he finished speaking, the rumbling stopped. And then the portal promptly exploded. Zim screeched and dove behind the console, dragging GIR with him. When the noise stopped, Zim peered over the console and stared in dismay.

The wall where the portal had just been was covered in scorch marks. His entire base was wrecked... again... and it looked as if it would take ages to fix.

Suddenly a yellow light flashed where the portal had been. It flared, then sent out a bright white beam that washed over Zim, GIR, and everything else in the room, then sped through the wall.  _What was_  that _?_  Zim wondered, and waited a second before standing. "Well... well, that didn't work out quite the way I planned. Come on GIR, let's-"

He was interrupted as the base's computer voice came on. <Incoming message for Invader Zim!> the computer announced.

Zim immediately jumped to a single conclusion. "THE TALLEST!" he cried. "They must be calling to check on me! And this place is a mess..." He looked around at his ruined lab, then said desperately, "Computer! Tell them I'm not home!"

It was too late. The video screen at the front of the lab lit up and the Almighty Tallest came on, staring around.

"Zim!" Tallest Red said. "We were just checking in to see what happened. Some sort of white light flashed through our ship and we figured it was from  _your_  lab."

"Er, yes," Zim said awkwardly. "My apologies, Tallest. I was building a portal, and it exploded."

Tallest Red stared. "Why on Irk were you building a... never mind. Uh... you said your, uh  _portal_  exploded? It must have been the Resisty!"

This time it was Zim's turn to stare. "The... Resisty?" he said. "But aren't they-"

"It's something we wanted to warn you about!" Tallest Purple broke in.

Tallest Red nodded. "Yes. We've gotten intel that the Resisty sent out a fatal virus to all our computers and-"

"A VIRUS?" Zim screamed. Immediately, he stripped off his gloves and doused his hands in a generous amount of the Irken skin sanitizer he kept on the console.

"A  _computer_  virus, germaphobe," Tallest Red sighed. "The Resisty sent out a virus to cause all Irken computers and equipment to explode. It's specifically targeted to Irkens, as well."

"The explosion targets a specific race?" Zim asked.

"Yes. That's what I just said."

"Is that possible?"

"It's an  _explosion_!" Tallest Purple burst out. "Would you feel better if we said 'No'?"

Tallest Red continued on. "It's an enormous, atomic explosion, and it's set for-wait, what time is it now?" He turned around and the Irkens in the control room held a whispered discussion. The Tallests turned back to the screen. "...right. Everything's going to explode at exactly, um, 3:12 A.M."

Zim looked at his clock. "But that's five minutes from now!" he cried. "And... and my portal already exploded."

"That must have been a malfunction in the virus," Tallest Red said logically.

Zim gulped. "So, what do I do?"

"You have to turn off everything!" Tallest Purple commanded. "Shut down the entire house. Turn off everything made by Irkens, including your SIR unit. Then, uh, go far away from your house and stay away until you get the 'all clear' signal!"

"And... this'll keep everything from blowing up?" Zim asked.

Tallest Red nodded. "Yes, but hurry. You only have four minutes now."

"Thank you, My Tallest!" Zim said. He was about to cut the transmission but paused. "Wait. If the Resisty planned to destroy us by sabotaging our computers, why did they tell us the exact time they're programmed to explode?"

"Because... because the Resisty's useless at planning a rebellion!" Tallest red spluttered. "We have to go now. Good luck surviving and stuff." The transmission abruptly ended and the screen went dark. Zim immediately ran around the room, turning everything off.

"Computer!" he yelled.

<Huh?> the computer said.

"The Resisty sent out a virus to cause all Irken technology to explode at 3:12. You have to help me to-"

<What!> the computer interrupted. <You're saying I'm supposed to explode in three minutes? Aw, man... why am I  _always_ the last to know these things? >

"Just shut everything off!" Zim shouted.

<Even the security?> the computer asked uneasily.

"Yes.  _Everything_. And shut yourself off, too."

<Okay. Fine. I've been wanting to have a break.> The lights around the room began to flicker off.

"Wait!" Zim shrieked. "First take me up to the main house.  _Then_  shut yourself off."

<Sheesh, make up your mind,> the computer grumbled, but the elevator opened obligingly and Zim hurried inside. He broke out in a cold sweat as the elevator climbed upward excruciatingly slowly. At last it came to the house and Zim crashed out through the toilet. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled into the TV room, where GIR sat staring at the broken television as if he were watching an intriguing show. Zim blinked. He hadn't even realized that GIR had left the lab. Whatever.

"GIR! We have to go! Now!" he shouted.

"But-my show!" GIR protested. Zim grabbed him by the metal arm and pulled him out the door.

"I have to shut you off, GIR," he said. "We have to get away from here." As they ran down the walk, all the lights in the house switched off. Somewhere in the back of Zim's mind it registered that he had forgotten his disguise, but he couldn't go back to get it now. Besides, it was dark and there weren't any humans out at the moment. As they ran, Zim slid open a secret panel in the back of GIR's head and pressed a small red button.

"YAY!" GIR cried happily. He went limp and Zim carried him, continuing with his fast trot.

Zim had no idea how much time was left until the explosion. He only knew that he had to be as far away as possible. His robotic spider legs sprang from his PAK and he scurried faster, turning onto street after street and not bothering to check for landmarks or signs to keep track of where he was. He vaulted over a wooden fence and into someone's yard.

A series of loud barks caused him to turn around and see some sort of vicious-looking black and white dog tearing toward him with slavering jaws. The dog jumped and its teeth would have snapped closed on Zim's foot if he hadn't jerked backwards in time. The dog lunged again, and with a yelp Zim climbed through the next few yards until the frenzied barking had faded.

Zim paused tensely. This yard was dark and quiet, with no sign of dogs or humans. He relaxed and dumped GIR on the grass. The deactivated robot was getting heavy. His spider legs retracted and he dropped into a sitting position, plucking at the grass in worry and irritation.

"Stupid Resisty," he muttered. "Stupid explosions. Stupid GIR. Stupid, filthy humans and their stupid, filthy dogs." He pounded his fist on the ground until his squeedly-spooch stopped feeling like it was tying itself in knots and he could think more clearly. He considered his situation. Well, he couldn't sit here all night and let some human come along and see him. Glancing around for a suitable shelter, he caught sight of a wooden deck extending from the house. There was a small amount of space under it, and it looked like it would keep him well-hidden. "There!" he said. "Come, GIR. We shall take refuge under there until the Tallest call again." He took GIR's metal arm and dragged his minion over to the deck, crawling under. It suddenly occurred to him that he should turn off his PAK to keep it from exploding, but he decided against that. There was nothing the Resisty could do to sabotage the superior technology of an Irken PAK! It would be safe from viruses.

Zim crouched in the darkness under the deck, shifting to make himself more comfortable. He was ready to wait there all night if he had to, or until he got the "all clear."

* * *

Meanwhile, up on the Massive, the two Tallests howled with laughter as soon as the transmission to Earth was cut.

"He fell for it!" Tallest Purple said, tears streaming out of his eyes. He struggled for breath.

Tallest Red was laughing equally as hard. "As if the incompetent  _Resisty_ , what a  _stupid_  name, could ever pull off something like an exploding computer virus!" He paused. "But you know... I almost wish they  _had_."

"We could've accidentally called too late to warn Zim!" Tallest Purple laughed.

"That would've been a  _shame_... oh, well. Can't have everything." Tallest Red started snickering again.

Suddenly Tallest Purple realized something. "Hey!" he said. "If all of Zim's technology is turned off, how's he gonna receive any sort of 'all clear' signal?"

Tallest Red waved the question away. "Doesn't matter. I wasn't planning on sending one anyway!" The two Tallests laughed again.

"Do you think Zim'll turn off his PAK, too?" Tallest Purple asked excitedly.

"Hm... I don't think we'd be that lucky... but we can always hope. Anyway, this should have been enough of a distraction. Knowing Zim, he'll leave his house completely unprotected for the rest of the night!"


	3. Intruder Alert

When Gaz went downstairs in the morning she found a cold mug of coffee on the counter, which she thought was strange because as far as she knew, Dib hated coffee. She expected to find her brother passed out on the couch but he wasn't there. Unconcerned, she poured herself a bowl of cereal. When she finished it she poured herself another bowl, finishing off the box. Dib could eat something else and drink his gross coffee.  
  
She went into the living room and picked up her Game Slave 2 to continue her game from last night. She turned it on, but it beeped loudly and the startup screen wouldn't come on.   
  
"No! What's wrong with this thing?" Gaz said desperately, tapping it as if that would fix it. She looked it over and realized that the game cartridge was missing. She suddenly remembered that she had put it on the coffee table, but it was gone now. Gaz inhaled sharply. Dib must have taken it. Accidentally or not, he wasn't allowed to touch her stuff.  _EVER_. "You'll pay for this, Dib!" Gaz shouted. When her brother didn't respond she grew even angrier. "Say good-bye to your stupid show!" She turned on the TV and deleted every single Mysterious Mysteries episode that Dib had recorded. There! That would teach him to mess with her stuff. And if anything happened to her game, Dib wouldn't live to see another day.  
  
It was almost time to go to Skool and Dib still hadn't appeared. He was probably in his room looking at stupid paranormal websites or spying on Zim with a camera or something. If he wanted to be late for Skool, that was his own lookout.  
  
Gaz gathered her stuff and was about to leave when she caught sight of Dib's laptop. It was propped up by the couch with a sticky note stuck on it. The note said, " _Something extremely important and world-threatening came up. Took the ship to investigate. I'll be gone awhile. Order out again for supper_." Gaz frowned. So, she'd been yelling at her brother and it turned out he wasn't even in the house. Great. Without giving the note a second thought she turned and left the house, heading to Skool.  
  
\---  
  
No messages. There hadn't been any all night. Zim checked his communicator again, but it said the same as it had five minutes ago. Around dawn Zim had suddenly realized that shutting off all the power would keep him from getting a message from the Tallest, so he had taken a risk and turned his communicator back on. But there was still nothing. Surely it was safe to go back to his base now!  
  
He waited another minute, then made up his mind. The threat must be over by now. The Tallest were just checking on the other Invaders, or capturing the Resisty, or something. They had forgotten him for the moment. Well, when they checked on him, he would be at home and his base would be completely fixed up again. They'd be impressed by that!  
  
Ready to go back home, he opened up the panel on GIR's head and pressed the red button again. The little robot's eyes glowed turquoise.  
  
"I wanna watch the show!" he said, not seeming to notice that they were far from home and hiding in a strange backyard.  
  
"Sh! We have to be quiet, GIR!" Zim said. "We're outside in the daylight without our disguises. We should be able to make it home without humans seeing us but you can't make a sound!"  
  
"I gonna be quiet like a mouse!" GIR yelled loudly. Zim groaned and switched the robot off again. Carrying GIR he crept out of his hiding place, glancing around warily for any sign of humans. When none appeared he dashed to the fence, climbing over using the spider legs and jumping into the next yard. He did this until he came to the backyard with the savage dog from last night, retracting the spider legs so he could perch on the fence. The dog did not seem to be there, so he hopped into the yard and continued on. He emerged from one yard and hurried along the sidewalk instead. As he ran he kept to the shadows and hid every few seconds. This was the worst situation an Invader could be in--stranded outside in broad daylight without a disguise!  
  
Two humans were walking along on the other side of the road, chatting to each other in annoying, high-pitched voices. Zim plunged himself into a bush and only too late realized that every branch was covered in thorns.  
  
He waited until the humans had passed by before bursting from his cover and pressing himself against the wall of a house, gingerly picking out thorns that had imbedded themselves in his green skin. Which way was home?! Zim looked around, completely lost. His gaze fell on a low brick wall by a house. There! That looked familiar. He must have passed it last night.  
  
Zim darted toward it, moving quickly so that even if any humans managed to catch sight of him, they wouldn't be able to take a picture. He made it to the wall and crouched in the shadows. What now? He peered around the wall, then relaxed. This was the route he took to Skool everyday. He knew the way from here! Speaking of Skool, it would have started an hour ago. He couldn't go now. Being late would raise suspicions! Also, he had to go back and fix up what was left of his base from the computer virus.  
  
When Zim finally made it home he saw that it looked the same as he had left it. Apparently, turning everything off  _had_  prevented it from exploding! Zim rushed inside and closed the door, leaning against it in relief and dumping GIR unceremoniously on the floor. He'd reactivate his minion later, but right now he wasn't in the mood to have an insane robot running around. Meanwhile, he still had to fix his base. Even if the computer virus had failed, his lab was still wrecked from the earlier portal explosion. He had to repair it and then try to get in touch with the Tallest.  
  
\---  
  
Gaz returned home from Skool to find the house empty and silent. Everything was exactly the way it had been this morning. Dib's laptop was sitting on the floor where Gaz had left it. The TV was turned off instead of playing reruns of Mysterious Mysteries or some other paranormal junk. And the kitchen was a complete mess. Gaz clenched her fists. It was  _Dib's_  turn to clean the kitchen! Gaz had covered for his chores one time too many. As if taking her game cartridge wasn't enough, he had the nerve to try to leave his work for her to do! Gaz was going to find her brother and drag him back here after reclaiming her game. She would force him to do the dishes like he was supposed to.  _Then_  he could go save the world. Gaz dressed in her black stealth outfit, grabbed the note from Dib's laptop, and headed out.  
  
\---  
  
Zim stood in the middle of his ruined lab. "Computer!" he shouted again. "Computer!" There was no response. "For the love of Irk, Computer, WAKE UP! We avoided the virus!" The computer still didn't answer. Zim opened a drawer in one of the consoles and pulled out all the files he could find, rifling through them in the hopes of unearthing a booklet or something that would tell him how to manually reactivate his useless computer.  
  
<There's someone at the door!> the computer suddenly said. Zim jumped.  
  
"What! You're on after all! Why didn't you answer me?!"  
  
<There's someone at the door,> the computer said again, ignoring Zim's question.  
  
"Computer, I've been trying to reactivate you all day and you've just been ignoring me?! We have to fix up the lab! Let the Roboparents answer the door. Or GIR!"  
  
<GIR is deactivated and the Roboparents are unavailable,> the computer stated.  
  
"FINE!" Zim snapped. "I shall answer the door my _self_!" He donned his disguise and rode the elevator to the main house, opening the front door to see a little girl dressed in black standing there. "Who are you?" Zim asked.  
  
"You know who I am," the girl replied. "I'm  _Gaz_. Now where's Dib?"  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about, ugly little human girl. I've never seen you before in my life. Now vacate this property. Begone with you!"  
  
In response, Gaz pushed past him and entered his house. "I need to know where Dib is. Now, where  _is_ he?"  
  
"Hey!" Zim protested. "Do you understand the Earth concept of being 'invited in'? Leave the house of ZIM!"  
  
"Not until I get my brother. Now I'll ask you again. And this time, _answer_  me." She grabbed Zim by the shirt and yanked him closer. "Where is he?"  
  
Zim pulled away, then paused. "Who?"  
  
"Dib! My brother. What have you done with him this time? Tell me or I'll plunge you into pain the likes of which you could never imagine!"  
  
Zim considered this. Then he folded his arms and said, "I'm not telling you." What could this little girl do, anyway? She was a mere human. He was a superior Irken Invader! And besides, this was his house. Nothing could happen to him in his own--  
  
"OW!" he shrieked, jumping backwards. He couldn't be sure what had happened but the little girl had moved--simply  _moved_ \--and his wig had been cast onto the floor, there had been a flash of something silver, and now it felt like his head was on fire. "Wha... wha..."  
  
Gaz held up her hands. In one she clenched a pair of scissors that dripped with greenish-blue blood, and in the other she held a black antenna that had moments previously been attached to Zim's head.  
  
Zim reeled from the pain and almost collapsed. "You--you cut off my antenna," he said disbelievingly. "With a pair of  _scissors_..."  
  
" _Now_  are you going to tell me?" Gaz said.  
  
"You will pay for this, human!" Zim shouted. He picked up a cloth from the table and held it to his head to staunch the bleeding. "And I will tell you nothing. NOTHING!"  
  
"Do I need to take the other one, too?" Gaz stepped forward, raising the scissors. Zim involuntarily backed away from her.  
  
"Fine," he spat. "I'll tell you, but only because this...  _amuses_  me. I don't know where the Dib-monkey is."  
  
Gaz immediately turned and went to the hidden elevator under the table, which led to the underground lab. Zim ran in front of her to block her way.  
  
"Where are you going?" he demanded. "I told you I don't know where Dib is. Now you must leave!"  
  
"You weren't at Skool today," Gaz said unexpectedly.  
  
Zim stiffened. "I couldn't go. I've been sick."  
  
"Dib wasn't in Skool today either."  
  
Well, Zim had to admit that looked a little suspicious. But this human had to leave  _now_ , so he could get back to repairing his lab! "You need to leave," he said.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere."  
  
"Then you leave me no choice!" Zim rushed over to the door and reactivated GIR once more. The little robot jumped to his feet and saluted, his eyes glowing red. Zim pulled him over to Gaz and pointed at her. "GIR, there's an intruder here! Capture the intruder!"  
  
"Yes, Sir!" GIR said. Then he promptly grabbed Zim and lifted him over his head, striding towards the door.  
  
"GIR! Put me down at once!" Zim yelled, struggling. He dropped to the ground and stood up to face the robot, seething. "GIR, I'm not the intruder! Do you even know what an intruder is? Well? DO YOU?"  
  
GIR paused. Then he yelled, "I got a chicken in teh oven!" and ran away. Zim turned and froze when he saw Gaz staring at him skeptically.  
  
"He's, uh, programmed to do that," Zim said. "It's a giant  _death_  chicken that we're going to use to destroy all of humanity! Yes."  
  
"Zim, you still haven't told me where Dib is."  
  
"I don't  _know_  where he is!" Zim said exasperatedly. This human was somehow even dumber than the ones in his class! "Normally I would _force_  you out of my house, using _force_ , but my Invader training prohibits me from harming a female of an inferior species."  
  
"Great, Zim." Gaz had had enough. She opened the secret elevator and was about to step inside when Zim blocked her way again.  
  
"Look, what can I give you to get you out of my house?!" he said. "Snacks? Books? Super weapons? Germ spray? Trading cards?"  
  
Gaz raised an eyebrow. " _You_  have _trading cards_?"  
  
Apparently mistaking Gaz's amusement as interest, Zim nodded vigorously.  
  
"Yes! Yes! I'll show you." He ran to a drawer, pulled out a stack of cards, and dashed back to Gaz. "Here! Do you like them? You can have them if you  _leave_! They are in very good condition, which I know is important with filthy human trading cards."  
  
Gaz looked at them. "Those are boxtops," she said.  
  
"Even better! Take them and go!"  
  
"Not without Dib."  
  
Zim screamed in frustration. "GAH! You stupid, non-listening carrot-haired meat puppet! The Tallest are going to call soon, I need to repair my base, and you WON'T LEAVE! I told you I don't know where your filthy brother is! I haven't seen him since Skool yesterday! Now get out or FACE THE WRATH OF ZIM!!!"  
  
Gaz looked unimpressed by his temper tantrum. "It's just I thought he'd be here. I found this note on his laptop." She handed Zim the crumpled note, which he read.  
  
"That could be  _any_  world-threatening stuff," he said. "Why would you think he'd be here?!"  
  
Gaz crossed her arms and nodded to the note. "Because that's not Dib's handwriting."


	4. Speedy Thing Goes In, Speedy Thing Comes Out

GIR was down in the lab again. He scratched his head, wondering why he had come down, when there was something like a whisper in his ear.  _Go closer_ , it seemed to say.  
  
"You sound familiar!" GIR said. He was standing in front of the swirling yellow portal on the wall. It didn't occur to the robot that this should be strange, seeing as Zim had never fixed it after the explosion.  
  
 _It's a lovely portal, isn't it?_  the voice in GIR's head said.  _Step inside. It's nice in here._  GIR couldn't place the voice. It wasn't Zim, but it really did sound familiar.  _Come on in,_  the voice said.  _We have waffles here. And tacos._  Tacos! GIR didn't need any more urging. He ran into the portal, which closed behind him.  
  
\---  
  
Gaz had finally become suffificiently annoyed with Zim and left his house, much to the alien's delight. She now sat at the kitchen table at her house, picking at the spaghetti on her plate. Her fists shook with barely-suppressed rage and she raised her fork to take a bite. Then she dropped it and gritted her teeth.  
  
Professor Membrane walked into the room and fixed his own bowl of pasta. "Hello, Daughter!" he said. "Just came back from the labs to have dinner with my offspring! The transit of Venus is still going on, and we decided to watch it in shifts. The alignment won't be as well-analyzed in my absence, of course, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for the sake of one's descendents!" He sat across the table from Gaz and seemed to notice her mood for the first time. "Why, Daughter! You seem more wrathful than usual tonight."  
  
Gaz trembled with rage. "I've been without my game for a day.  _A whole day._  I've  _never_  gone this long without playing Vampire Piggies.  _ **NEVER!!!**_ " Her eyes erupted in flames and she pounded viciously on the table.  
  
"I see. And what happened to your game, then? Surely you haven't misplaced it--I rarely see you without that delightful game in hand, Gaz!"  
  
"Dib took my game cartridge and then vanished, leaving behind a mysterious note that wasn't in his handwriting."  
  
"Hm." Membrane took a bite of spaghetti and looked around the near-empty kitchen. "Say... something's  _different_  around here."  
  
Gaz shrugged. "I just told you that Dib's missing. He's been gone since last night. That's why the kitchen still isn't clean."  
  
"Ah! My son. Missing!  _That's_  it. I wonder where he went off to?"  
  
"Wherever it was, he took my game with him and someone else wrote that note."  
  
"Ah, well, he'll be back by dinner." Membrane seemed entirely unconcerned.  
  
Gaz raised an eyebrow. "It's dinner  _now_."  
  
"Is it really? It seems like it was noon only seven hours ago! Well, there you have it--time flies when you're making discoveries for SCIENCE! Well, he'll turn up eventually. He always does!"  
  
Gaz scowled. "But I need my game."  
  
Membrane snapped his fingers. "I've GOT it!" he announced. He pulled some sort of blinking device from his pocket. "Here, take this tracking device. Filled with and powered by the totally realistic-sounding element  _DIDONAI-VIVERE_ , it will lock on your game cartridge and show you the exact coordinates of it!" He handed it to Gaz.  
  
"And... you just carry this around?"  
  
Membrane laughed and reached across the table, ruffling his daughter's hair. "Of  _course_  I do, Gaz! You'd be surprised at what I fill my pockets with for science!"  
  
\---  
  
Gaz walked sourly down the sidewalk, holding the tracking device in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Membrane had left after dinner to go back to his lab across town and continue watching the transit. Gaz had figured that he wouldn't mind if she left left during the night to track down her brother who was very possibly the victim of a kidnapping.  
  
Gaz peered at the blinking green arrow on her tracking device, then looked up and scowled. It was pointing directly at Zim's house.  
  
 _Back where I started_ , she thought in irritation.  _This whole thing is pointless. I feel like stupid Dib._  She dropped the tracking device in her pocket and marched up to Zim's house for the second time that evening, rapping sharply on the alien's door. A few seconds passed before Zim, wearing his disguise, opened it and peered out at her.  
  
"Who are you?" he asked.  
  
"We've been through this!" Gaz shouted. "I'm back, and this time I know that you've got Dib--or at least my game cartridge--in here somewhere. Take me down to your lab, Zim. NOW."  
  
\---  
  
Zim stood in his lab with his arms crossed, staring through narrowed eyes at a blank computer screen and refusing to say anything. He was still wearing his disguise but that annoyance barely registered in his mind. He could hear that  _horrible_  little human girl behind him, pressing buttons on some primitive Earth device. Zim's computer had done a decent job of fixing the base but it wasn't finished yet, and the girl had forced him to let her come down. Zim clenched his fists in anger. It was bad enough that she had come earlier to pester him before he could finally get rid of her. But now she was  _back_  and Zim did his best to ignore her, having gotten tired of telling her repeatedly that he had no idea where Dib was.  
  
He knew he should probably work on his base but he couldn't concentrate with the human standing there. Also, he couldn't remember exactly where his tools were. He couldn't even be sure of what tools he  _needed_.  
  
"Why are you even trying to find Dib?!" he burst out. "He was probably kidnapped by Bigfeets or something. I say good riddance! Now I really am very,  _very_  busy."  
  
"I'm looking for Dib because he still has chores to do!" Gaz replied. "And he stole one of my games! I'm trying to track it down now with this thing Dad gave me."  
  
"You can't track  _anything_  with inferior human technology!" Zim sneered, turning around. "Irken technology is the only thing that is good at tracking. I'm using it now to locate GIR. He's gone missing... again."  
  
Gaz looked at Zim's tracking equipment, on which a message popped up. "Your superior Irken technology isn't working," she noted. Zim fumed.  
  
"Just because the reading makes no sense doesn't mean it's broken!" he snarled. He pounded his fist on the console, but the reading stayed the same. It said, ' _Location of subject not found. Last known coordinates: three feet to your left. Have a nice day and try not to get yourself blown up for once!_ '  
  
"Actually, mine says the same thing about my game cartridge," Gaz said, holding up the tracking device. "Except for the thing about blowing up."  
  
"Stupid computer," Zim muttered. "I do  _not_  blow myself up all the time."  
  
"What's so special about the place 'three feet to your left'?" Gaz asked. The only thing to Zim's left was a wall. And an ugly wall at that.  
  
Zim waved the question away impatiently. "Oh, that's my broken cootie portal--" He realized that that was something he probably shouldn't be telling a human and hurried to correct himself. "I mean, NOTHING! There's nothing there!  _Especially_  no portals. In fact, it is specifically portal...less. Strictly without portals! I AM NORMAL."  
  
"A portal, huh?" Gaz said, considering it. "Well, that's where both tracking devices say Dib and your stupid robot went." She sighed. If there was anywhere her idiotic brother would end up, it was inside a poorly-made alien portal.  
  
"So what if it  _is_  a portal?" Zim challenged. "And I'm not saying it is. But if it was, it would have exploded. And even if this hypothetical portal  _hadn't_  exploded, you would never be able to hypothetically turn it on!"  
  
Gaz calmly walked over and pulled a large, obnoxiously-obvious red lever. Zim stared in disbelief as the yellow, flashing portal sprang up, apparently not hypothetical or destroyed in any way.  
  
"Heh," Zim said. "Look at that."  
  
"So where does this lead?" Gaz asked.  
  
"Nowhere that concerns a cake-sniffing human!" Zim snapped. "Who LISPS!"  
  
"I don't lisp."  
  
"And that makes you that much more disgusting! I have tolerated your presence long enough. Leave now, and I may spare your pitiful life!"  
  
"I need to find my brother." Gaz started toward the portal and Zim laughed.  
  
"You foolish human child! You're just going to walk into the portal?! It leads straight to the World of Coooooooootttttttiiiiiieeeeesssss. It's filled with COOTIES!"  
  
"I'd gathered that."  
  
"Your inferior chemical composition would not be able to handle the  _strain_  of entering into another world!"  
  
"Are you finished?"  
  
"Yes. So go ahead through the portal. I shall immensely enjoy watching you  _explode_."  
  
Gaz turned and walked straight through the portal. Zim's eyes darted to the red lever and his hands itched to pull it, turning off the portal and trapping the annoying human inside to be torn apart by rabid cooties. But he still had to find GIR, who had apparently gone into the portal.  
  
Reluctantly he took a deep breath and stepped inside...  
  
\---  
  
...only to come out on the walkway in front of his house. He glanced behind him to see the yellow portal glowing on his front door. Well, this couldn't be right... he had programmed the portal to lead to the World of Cooties! What had gone wrong?  
  
"What's wrong with your portal?" Gaz asked, coming up and voicing his thoughts. "We're still in the city. Wasn't your portal supposed to lead to another world or something?"  
  
"Silence!" Zim interrupted. "This is exactly how I planned it. Now begone with you! I must find GIR."  
  
"You're helping me to find Dib," Gaz said.  
  
Zim stared, wondering how anyone, even a  _human_ , could possibly be so dense. "I am not! I'm here to find GIR and once I find him I'm  _leaving_."  
  
Gaz crossed her arms. "I  _said_ , you're helping me to find Dib."  
  
"I'm doing no such thing!" Zim turned and began to walk away from her.  
  
"Fine," Gaz said with a shrug. "Then I'll just go back to your stupid lab and turn off the portal with you inside."  
  
"Go ahead," Zim sneered. "It didn't work anyway. We're still in the real world!"  
  
"If we are, then why couldn't the tracking devices find Dib and GIR?" Gaz challenged. "Besides, your house is destroyed here."  
  
Zim froze mid-step and turned around slowly to see that his house was in ruins. The scorched walls were crumbled and the only thing still in moderately good condition was the door on which the portal hovered. He gasped in horror. His house hadn't been like that before! Either something terrible had happened since he'd been down in the lab, or they really  _were_  in a completely different place.  
  
Also, Irken technology was the most reliable in the universe. If the portal hadn't led anywhere, then why couldn't his computer track down GIR? Zim hated to admit it, but the scary human girl was right. If she shut off the portal, he'd be stuck here with no way to get back.  
  
"All right," he said grudgingly. "You may accompany me while I search for GIR." He started walking again without bothering to see if the human was following. The first chance he got he would ditch her somewhere.  
  
Zim soon found that he wasn't looking for GIR so much as fuming and feeling sorry for himself. Because of Gaz he was now one antenna short and was trudging through this strange world, which at first had seemed like the usual Earth but was looking different every second. There were people about, and they kept staring at him like they thought he looked weird or something. Well, duh--he was wearing his disguise but he still had green skin and no ears. And he was lacking a nose. But humans usually didn't notice those things. He continued on, not really caring where he was going but hoping that he wouldn't get lost.  
  
Gaz pulled out her tracking device again but the green arrow was spinning crazily instead of being helpful and showing which way to go. She had no idea what was wrong with it or how to fix it--besides game systems, electronics just weren't her thing.  
  
"Any idea where we are?" she asked Zim. Not that he would know.  
  
"WE are exactly where we SHOULD be!" Zim replied.  
  
"And were is  _that_?" Gaz was still irritated that she couldn't play Vampire Piggies, and she figured that she might as well try to make whatever conversation she could with this idiotic extraterrestrial.  
  
"Shut your noise tube, Human! I grow weary of your incessant chittering!"  
  
Gaz rolled her eyes and looked back at the tracking device. The arrow hadn't stopped spinning. She looked back at Zim. "You know something about electronics, right?" she asked. "My tracking device isn't working anymore."  
  
Zim scoffed. "You see? Human technology is worthless!" He took the device, looked it over, and tossed it back to Gaz. "I,  _ZIM_ , would never stoop so low as to attempt to fix such a pitiful machine!"  
  
"In other words, you have no idea what's wrong with it." Gaz stowed the broken device back in her pocket. "Well, how are we supposed to find anyone without it working?"  
  
"My  _incredible_  Invader instincts have never been wrong! We go..." Zim looked around and pointed in a random direction. "THAT WAY! GIR is certain to be over there!" He marched off, humming to himself. Gaz sighed and followed, turning her attention to observing her surroundings. This place  _looked_  like the city where she lived, although the buildings seemed to be a bit different. However, unlike Zim's house, all of these buildings were still standing. She and Zim passed by the library and Gaz noticed that there were many more people crowding its doors than usual.  
  
Zim frowned as they walked, determined not to let little Gaz know how uncertain he was about this. His portal had obviously messed up, because this definitely was  _not_  the World of Cooties. So where in Irk  _were_  they? This place seemed enormous, too. How were they supposed to find GIR and Dib?! No, wait. He was only looking for GIR.  _Gaz_  was trying to find Dib. Stupid humans. Zim kicked at the ground crossly. GIR could be anywhere! Was he supposed to search this entire--this entire-- _whatever_  it was--to find the crazy robot?  
  
They passed by the Skool and Gaz stopped to stare at it. From the glow of the streetlights she could see that it looked pretty much the same except that the lettering at the front had changed--some idiot had misspelled it as "School." Gaz considered it. With the tracking device broken, they had to start their long search  _somewhere_. Might as well be the Skool.   
  
She changed direction and started toward it.  
  
"Where are you doing?" Zim demanded.  
  
"We're going to look around the Skool."  
  
Zim seethed. " _I_  am the leader of this exhibition!" he shouted. "NOT YOU!"  
  
"Do you mean 'expedition'?"  
  
"NO! We keep going this way. I am the Irken Elite! OBEY MY ORDERS, HUMAN!  _Follow me_!"  
  
"I thought you didn't want me along at all."  
  
"I DON'T!" Zim crossed his arms. "If we go to the Skool, it's because  _I_  decided to!"  
  
Gaz raised an eyebrow.  
  
Zim quickly changed direction. "I'm getting tired, human worm-baby. I command that we go to the Skool!"  
  
Gaz led the way up the stone steps and through the Skool doors, which surprisingly weren't locked. She kept an eye out for familiar scythe-shaped hair or the sight of black coattails whipping around a corner, but the building seemed deserted. For the first time, Gaz considered the note she had found. If it wasn't in Dib's handwriting, who had written it? What if her brother had been kidnapped? Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to be wandering around a deserted building in the darkness with a possible kidnapper on the loose. Then again, she could handle anything that came her way. As for Zim, as incompetent as he was he had to have some kind of laser gun thing with him. After all, he  _was_  an alien.  
  
Gaz went to where she knew Dib's classroom was but it was empty as well. Even the creepy teacher was gone.  
  
"They're not in here!" Zim said exasperatedly. "We'd be able to hear it if--wait, who are we looking for, again?"  
  
Gaz sighed. "Dib. And your annoying robot."  
  
"Yes! If GIR was here I'd have been able to hear him before I entered the building. Now I'm leaving to continue my search ELSEWHERE!" The alien turned and began marching away. Gaz followed, wondering how she was ever going to find Dib and her game cartridge.  
  
Suddenly she kicked something with the tip of her foot. The glass object rolled across the floor and Gaz went over, picking it up. It was a bottle with a few dregs of silvery liquid in the bottom. She hadn't noticed the bottle earlier, and the contents were like nothing she'd ever seen. She put it in her other pocket, thinking it was something her dad might like to examine.  
  
Zim stopped to wait for her and looked immensely irritated about it. "I should just leave you behind, Snot-child! You're slowing us down and it's  _your_  fault I'm in here looking for my robot!"  
  
"I'd say it's  _your_  fault for building the portal in the first place."  
  
Zim scowled. "Well... your skull is stupid!" he said, and walked away. Gaz wondered if he meant her skull necklace or her actual _skull_. Whatever... it didn't matter.  
  
They left the Skool and continued down the sidewalk. It had grown even darker and now Gaz's flashlight was essential to be able to see where they were going. There was no one out anymore and the search was proving fruitless. Zim was just about to pull out his radio and try to contact GIR, wondering why he hadn't done that sooner, when he suddenly felt a tug on his arm. He whirled around to snarl at Gaz, but she was looking at the nearby bushes. They were rustling slightly.  
  
"I think there's someone in there," she said quietly. She stepped toward the bush and Zim realized he could hear a low voice coming from the shrubs, as if someone was muttering to themselves.  
  
Gaz crept up to it, then yelled, "Freeze!" and crashed through the leafy barrier.  
  
"AAAAUUUUUGGGHH!" the person on the other side of the bush screamed, falling backwards in fright. Stuck in the ground was some kind of device and, crouching next to it, was Dib, looking scared out of his mind.  
  
"Gaz!" the self-proclaimed paranormal investigator said in relief, then looked confused. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I could ask you the same thing." Gaz crossed her arms. "I've been looking for you everywhere, Dib."  
  
"But how did you  _get_  here?" Dib asked. "I don't even know where 'here' is! It's not our town, and I've been trying to get some information about what this place is but I don't have my computer. I've tried talking to people but they've all run away screaming, which I guess isn't that different from normal but it hasn't been very helpful. All I have is one of Dad's locator devices--" he motioned to the thing on the ground "--and I've been trying to use it to figure out where I am, but it's not working."  
  
Gaz rolled her eyes. "Tell someone who cares," she said. "Just give me back my game and then come home to clean the kitchen."  
  
"Your... game?" Dib fished in his pocket and pulled out Gaz's game cartridge. "Oh! Oh, sorry. It must have fallen into my pocket. I didn't realize I had it..."  
  
"Just come on, Dib." Gaz snatched her game and led the way out of the bushes. Dib grabbed Membrane's locator and followed. He froze when he saw Zim, who was searching through an overturned garbage can for something.  
  
"What's HE doing here?!" Dib screeched, pointing furiously at the alien.  
  
Zim spun around. "I'm looking for my robot!" he said. He held bits of metal in his hands and started wiring them together as if he knew what he was doing.  
  
Dib took Gaz's arm and pulled her behind him. "Keep away from him, Gaz! He's an--"  
  
"--an alien. I  _know_. You don't have to keep telling me!" Gaz pulled away from Dib. "It's not like he's all discreet about it. Now come on, I'm sick of this place."  
  
Zim darted in front of them. "I don't know what you thought you were going to achieve by coming here, HUMANS!" he said. "I will never let you back into my base! You might take pictures or sabotage it or--"  
  
"You were in his  _base_?!" Dib demanded of Gaz.   
  
" _Shut up_ , Dib. It's where the portal was."  
  
"And you will both pay for intruding into my lab!" Zim shouted, at the same time that Dib asked, "What portal?"  
  
Dib looked at Zim. "And I wasn't  _in_  your lab, alien-freak!"  
  
Zim crossed his arms. "You must have been. You're  _here_ , and the only way to get  _here_  is through my portal."  
  
"You've both mentioned a portal," Dib said. "Gaz, what is going  _on_  here?"  
  
"Zim built a stupid portal to another world, and apparently it broke and exploded," Gaz replied.  
  
"The Resisty infiltrated my computers!" Zim shouted in self-defense. "I mean, uh... what portal?"  
  
"Wait, let me get this straight," Dib said. "You built an inter-dimensional portal... and it  _exploded_? Zim, the effects of that could be unpredictable! Remember the portal that led to that Nightmare World on Halloween?!"  
  
"This is completely different!" Zim snapped.  
  
"No it's not!" Dib looked like he was freaking out. "This could be a catastrophe! The explosion could've sent out a beam that would... I dunno... create an alternate reality or something!" He suddenly stopped and looked around. He took in the city, which was similar-but-different. It looked normal at first glance, but there was something wrong with it. "Y'know, actually... actually... that would explain where we are."  
  
"HAH! Foolish  _human_. I do not possess the power to  _create_  an alternate dimension!" Zim shook his head. "You really are stupid, Earth-" he paused. "Earth--um... what's your name, again? Doesn't it start with an R?"  
  
Dib stared. "You're kidding, right?"  
  
"It  _doesn't_  start with an R? Then... it starts with an S! Definitely an S."  
  
"It's DIB! Geez, Zim, we've been mortal enemies for months!"  
  
"Dib, then. I  _knew_  it started with an R."  
  
Dib was about to correct him but Gaz cut him off. "Just ignore him. I want to go home now."  
  
"Right," Dib agreed. "We're leaving, Zim, and then we're destroying this portal of yours!"  
  
Zim blocked their way again. "You're never getting back in my base! I won't allow it. You'll be stuck in here forEVER, Dib and Raz!"  
  
" _Gaz_."  
  
"PITIFUL HUMANS!!!" Zim looked intent on blocking their way until Gaz stepped forward, brandishing her fist.  
  
Zim cringed, at a loss. He couldn't decide what to do. If he let these two humans, his archenemies, go back to the real world, they might wreck his base (more than it was already wrecked), and expose him as an alien. They might also shut off or even destroy the portal before he and GIR could get out. And if he tried to keep them in here, there was no telling what Dib's sister would do. But what did he care? She was just a human girl. He was about to say so when Gaz looked at him angrily and fear for his life caused him to go against every one of his Invader instincts.  
  
"FINE!" he said. "Go back to the portal. But be warned, you have not seen the last of ZIM! If you touch anything in my lab... or look at anything... or breathe your smelly Earth breath on anything... then my computer will... will fire swords through your SKULL!"  
  
"We'll be sure to watch out for that!" Dib said cheerfully. "Lead the way to the portal, Gaz."  
  
"It's this way, on the door of Zim's house."  
  
Dib followed Gaz as she shone her flashlight and led the way back to Zim's destroyed house, where the portal was. Dib's excitement grew as they walked. "Can you believe it, Gaz? We finally have a way to defeat Zim once and for all! All we have to do is go back through the portal and close it before he can get through. He'll be trapped in here!" Dib clapped his hands in glee. "Although... if he was trapped in here he'd never be dissected and studied. And everyone will still think I'm crazy. But I guess getting him out of the way and saving the Earth is worth it. Right, Gaz? It's all about the greater good. Right? Come on, Gaz, we have to hurry if we're gonna beat Zim to the portal! Can't you walk any faster?" Gaz ignored him and kept walking at the same pace, wondering if trying to find her brother had really been the best course of action. Dib ran ahead of her, then paused. "Hey, Gaz..." he said, turning to look at her. "Um... I've been thinking. How  _did_  I get here?"  
  
"You don't remember anything?" Gaz said skeptically. Dib shook his head.  
  
"No... no. I remember trying to finish my research paper. And then... I think I went out to the garage for some reason. And then I was in this weird city, trying to figure out where I was and how to get home."  
  
"But you don't remember how you got here?"  
  
"I told you. I went to the garage, then I was here. I didn't even wake up or anything. I was just...  _here_. I didn't even wonder how I got here, until now. And I've been feeling kind of weird since I've been here. Gaz! What's wrong with me?"  
  
"You mean, other than the obvious? I don't know, Dib. But you were gone all day and I found this on your laptop." Gaz handed Dib the strange note, which was still in her pocket.  
  
"'Something extremely important and world-threatening came up,'" he read. "'Took the ship to investigate. I'll be gone awhile. Order out again for supper.' Who wrote this?"  
  
"I don't know. It's not your handwriting."  
  
"I know that! I didn't write this. 'Took the ship to investigate...' Hm. Was Tak's ship still in the garage?"  
  
"I didn't check."  
  
"GAZ! You found this note and didn't even check if the ship was still there?! This is important stuff! We have to get home right away!" He started to run again but Gaz grabbed his coat sleeve.  
  
"Hold on! It's your turn for chores!" she said. "Do the dishes first.  _Then_  you can check the garage and do all your stupid world-saving stuff."  
  
"But Gaz, this is--" Dib stopped himself. "Oh.  _That's_  why you came to get me. I should've known." He sighed. "All right. We should hurry." Despite his words he trudged after Gaz, who was moving faster than he was.  
  
Suddenly someone stepped in front of them. He had familiar orange hair, but instead of bright clothes he was wearing dull black apparel that caused him to almost disappear in the darkness.  
  
"Oh. Hi, Keef!" Dib said in surprise.  
  
Gaz tried to wave the newcomer aside. "Come on, we're in a hurry!" she said.  
  
Keef crossed his arms and smirked. "Look who it is. The four-eyed megalomaniac. And he brought his cream puff sister!" He winked at Gaz. "Lovin' the wardrobe change, doll face."  
  
Gaz clenched her fists. "Wait here while I snap his neck," she said to Dib. She started to move forward but Dib held her back.  
  
"Keef?" he said, trying to ignore Gaz's dark mutterings. "Are... are you feeling okay? You don't sound like yourself. At all. And... did you just call me a megalomaniac?"  
  
Keef glared at Dib, then smiled at Gaz. "I'll see  _you_  later," he said to her with another wink, then left.  
  
"If he ever does that again he'd better have a death wish," she muttered. Dib was staring off after Keef.  
  
"It makes no sense," he said to himself. "What would make Keef act like that? If this is some kind of alternate universe.... that must be Keef's alternate personality. His alternate self... and that means  _we_  must have alternate selves here. And what if we came into contact with them? GAZ! We have to get out of here!" He looked around until he spotted Zim's house. Without a word he took Gaz's arm and raced toward it, forcing Gaz to run behind him.  
  
"If you don't let go of my arm  _now_ , Dib--" she warned. Dib quickly let her go and continued to run. He skidded to a stop when he reached Zim's door, on which the portal still glowed. Suddenly his nerves failed him.  
  
"You, uh... you wanna go first?" he said when Gaz came up. Gaz frowned and marched right into the portal, vanishing with a flash.  
  
"It's okay!" she called from Zim's base. Her voice was barely audible through the portal. "Come  _on_ , Dib!"  
  
Dib summoned his courage and ran toward the portal.  
  
It felt like he slammed into a wall. He stumbled backwards and stared at the portal, which still loomed in front of him, and reached a hand into it. His fingers met with an invisible barrier. He slammed it with his fist and kicked it, but nothing happened. "Gaz!" he cried. "I can't get through!"  
  
Gaz emerged from the portal beside him. "What do you mean?" she demanded.  
  
"Look!" Dib pounded on the barrier, which neither of them could see. "Ugh, Zim's behind this! I just know it! That's why he let us go so easily. Because he knew I was trapped here!"  
  
"I can still get out," Gaz pointed out.  
  
"It must be programmed to keep only me in," Dib said bitterly. "We have to go find Zim again and get him to fix this. Come on, Gaz."  
  
"What makes you think I'm coming?" Gaz said.  
  
"We're a team! We have to stick together, Gaz! I might need your help! And besides... if I can't get through the portal, you'll have to clean up the kitchen by yourself."  
  
Gaz said nothing.  
  
Dib took this as agreement. "Now come on, Gaz. Let's go find Zim."


	5. Better Run, Better Run, Outrun My Gun

Dib and Gaz carefully made their way back to the Skool by the light of Gaz's flashlight and found that Zim still stood where they had left him. He was twisting together bits of metal scavenged from the trash and seemed to be trying to rewire the radio that extended from his electronic backpack (What was it called again? A "PAK"?) Apparently he was still trying to locate GIR.  
  
"Zim!" Dib shouted when they came within earshot. "What did you do to the portal?!"  
  
Zim released the radio with a start and it snapped back into his PAK. "The portal? What's wrong with it?" he gasped. "Oh Irk, that's my only way back! If it broke again--"  
  
"You know what's wrong with it!" Dib said. "It won't let me through!"  
  
"Eh... what about your little sister?" Zim nodded to Gaz.  
  
"Well, she can get through," Dib said, sounding as if he didn't consider it very important, "but I kept hitting some sort of barrier when I tried. The portal wouldn't work for me."  
  
Zim quickly lost interest. "Hm. Well. Hopefully it will still let me and GIR through." He brought out the radio again, twisted a knob, and shouted into it much louder than necessary. "GIR! GIR, CAN YOU HEAR ME! Come to your master at once, you horrible robot!" When there was no reply, he smacked the radio. " _Why_  isn't this thing working?! DIB! You broke my radio!"  
  
Dib ignored this accusation and stared at Zim. "So... you  _didn't_  program the portal to keep me trapped in here?"  
  
"Oh... of course I did!" Zim snapped. "Yes! That was my brilliant scheme from the start. And it worked! Victory for Zim."  
  
Dib didn't even bother trying to say that this, as usual, made absolutely no sense. "Well, Zim, whether this was your fault or not, you have to fix it!" he said. "We  _are_  in some kind of alternate dimension, and I think we all must have alternate personalities here! We just met Keef's alternate self and--"  
  
"Who's Keef?" Zim broke in.  
  
"Wow, Zim's being even dumber than usual," Gaz said.  
  
Dib paid no attention to either of them and continued on. "The  _point_  is, it could be catastrophic if we came into contact with our alternate selves. The universe could end! We could be destroyed! Or... or nothing whatsoever could happen, but that seems unlikely. I've read about these things." Dib quailed at the thought of Gaz and him meeting their other selves, and being obliterated from existence at the slightest touch.  
  
"You speak nonsense, human!" Zim let the radio back into his PAK and put his hands on his hips. "Whatever you're blathering about is completely impossible. Pure fantasy."  
  
"Zim, have you even been listening to me? We just met Keef but he didn't  _act_  like Keef..."  
  
Zim just shrugged. "Perhaps he was being controlled by some form of mind-controlling device," he said. "Happens all the time."  
  
Dib rolled his eyes. "I'm sure it does, in your freaky little world. And it makes total sense that someone would control Keef and make him flirt with my sister." At his words, Gaz kicked him in the shin. Hard. Dib winced and stepped away from her.  
  
"Of course it makes sense!" Zim said. "Your puny human mind could never hope to... heh?" He was interrupted by a sudden crash from the darkness of the alley beside the Skool, as if a Dumpster had fallen over. The small group stopped talking immediately and peered in the direction of the noise but it was impossible to see anything, even with Gaz's flashlight. Minutes passed.  
  
Dib was the first to break the silence. "It doesn't look like there's anything there... I guess it was just some sort of freak wind. Maybe a ghost or someth--"  
  
"MASTER!!" a shrill cry of excitement rent the air and Zim was barreled over by something silver that burst from the alley.  
  
"My squeedily-spooch!" Zim choked, clutching the area where his stomach should be. The group stared at the thing that had knocked him over.  
  
"There's your robot," Gaz said.  
  
"GIR!" Zim said when he realized who had attacked him. He pushed the little robot to the side, got to his feet, and composed himself. "I knew I'd find you here!  _Excellent_. Now we can finally LEAVE this cursed place!"  
  
"Cursed?" Gaz repeated. "Nothing's even happened yet."  
  
"Guess what I found!" GIR squealed happily to Zim. "I found WAFFLES!" He held up a metal hand in which was clenched a stack of waffles. His mouth was smeared with waffle crumbs.  
  
"Yes, GIR. I know how much you like waffles. Now come! This is the time we leave!" Zim took hold of GIR's metal antenna and started to pull him away in the direction of the ruined house with the portal.   
  
"Wait!" Dib lunged forward and grabbed Zim's stupid alien arm, furious. "You have to fix the portal so it'll let me through. You can't just leave us here!"  
  
Zim jerked away and turned to him. "I didn't ask for you to be here at  _all_ , Dib-stink!" he shouted. "But since you are, it provides a welcome opportunity to dispose of you for good. In here you are no threat to my mission!" The four metallic spider legs sprang from Zim's PAK and shot a beam of white light aimed straight for Dib's face, which suddenly drained of all color. Dib screamed and dove to the side so that the laser missed him by mere millimeters. When he looked up again, his hair and clothes were singed.  
  
Gaz, who stood next to the waffle-eating GIR, raised her eyebrows at the sight of the laser. "Now  _that_  was kind of impressive."  
  
Dib stood shakily, aware of how close to death he had just come. "You can't do this!" he shouted at Zim, who was dragging GIR away again. "The Earth... it'll be left...  _undefended_..."  
  
"YES! That is the POINT!" Zim laughed. "You thought you could thwart my brilliant plan. But how wrong you were,  _Dib_! Oh, how wrong you were!"  
  
" _What_  plan?" Dib demanded. "Do you mean the cootie thing?! There's no such thing as cooties! I was only playing along because it was funny and I wanted to make a point about how much of a moron you were!"  
  
Zim started to give an angry retort to that but Gaz broke in. "Hey, geniuses, someone's coming," she said, peering over Zim's shoulder.  
  
"What, again?" Dib glanced in the direction she was looking.  
  
A young girl who was slightly shorter than Dib stepped into view. "What are you doing here?" she asked in a sweet, high-pitched voice. She pointed at GIR. "You shouldn't be here! Not with him. They're coming, you know."  
  
"Who are  _you_?" Gaz asked.  
  
Dib stared at the newcomer. "What are you talking about? Who's coming?"  
  
"That little robot shouldn't have taken the waffles," the girl said. "I've been following him and I think they've been following  _me_. They'll be angry. You have to go!"  
  
"Wha--" Dib began, but suddenly he saw that, while they talked, Zim had begun to walk off with GIR. "HEY! Zim's getting away!" Dib shouted, and pelted after him only to be pulled back with a retch as Gaz grabbed the back of his collar and jerked him backwards. Shapes crashed out of the darkness on all sides, surrounding the group, and Dib realized with a start that if Gaz hadn't pulled him away, he would have been crushed.  
  
The strange little girl's warning had come too late. Her eyes widened in fear and she shrank away from the conflict until she disappeared from sight. Dib wasn't really worried about her, though. There was a bigger problem at the moment. A problem in the shape of twelve enormous hulking men armed to the teeth, leering down at him.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Zim didn't realize what had happened at first. For some reason it was difficult to think straight. He attributed this to the fact that the disgusting human girl, Gaz or whatever her name was, wouldn't leave him alone. Some of her REVOLTING human germs must have affected him, which was why he didn't register his predicament right away. When he did, he gasped in surprise and looked wildly around at the giant humans, who formed a threatening ring around the group and seemed to be carrying huge laser guns. They pressed in, herding Zim, GIR, Dib, and Gaz together.  
  
"What? This doesn't make any sense!" Dib said frantically. "At all! Where did these guys even come from?!"  
  
"Who are you!" Zim demanded of the humans that had emerged.   
  
"We are the Guards!" they said proudly, then ignored him and turned to face GIR.  
  
One pointed at him. "There is robot!" he said stupidly. He wore a crooked name tag that read "Raston."  
  
"Hi!" GIR waved and sprayed waffle crumbs everywhere.  
  
"Has friends." The men looked around at Zim, Dib, and Gaz.  
  
The one named Raston grunted. "Take them too."  
  
The colossal humans were impossible to tell apart, except for two that had nametags--Raston and another one who was apparently named COD1. That was a bit odd for a human, but Zim didn't dwell on this. He peered at the men but even his amazing eyes could make no other distinction amongst them. He sniffed the air. These things didn't smell human! The only human scents he could detect were the nauseating reeks of Dib and his sister...  
  
One of the Guards made a lunge for GIR, who dodged out of the way and clambered onto Zim's head.  
  
"OW! GIR! Get off!" Zim attempted to wave him away but GIR ignored him.  
  
"Give us robot! NOW!" the Guards turned their attention to Zim.  
  
"You dare to threaten ZIM?" the latter demanded immediately, stretching up to his full height of about four feet. He gestured to GIR, who perched on his head with the waffles still in hand. "This SIR Unit is the property of the mighty Irken Empire! Do NOT force me to call the Armada on you!"  
  
In answer, all of the hulking men leveled their blasters at Zim, GIR, and the two human children.  
  
"Hey, what's the big idea?" Dib said, eyeing the weapons with a look of unease.  
  
"You come with us!" the guy named COD1 said. "We are taking you to Overlo... o... ver..." he looked at his companions for help with pronouncing the word.  
  
"To Boss!" one said brightly. "Taking you to the Boss."  
  
"And if I don't want to see your Boss?" Zim challenged.  
  
"Then we get to blast you!" The hideous men looked insanely happy at this. It was a bit daunting. But not too daunting for an Invader of Zim's caliber, of course.  
  
He waved his hand in dismissal. "Yes, yes, very well. Come, GIR! We shall quit this miserable place!"  
  
COD1 pointed his blaster into Zim's face. "No clever escape!" he said.   
  
Zim narrowed his eyes. "You guys... ya don't talk much, do you."  
  
COD1 pulled the trigger. Dib gasped; he and Gaz pulled away and crashed into the Guards at the other end of the circle.  
  
Zim instinctively flung himself backwards, the deafening sound of the blast ripping through his wig and one remaining antenna, rattling his skull. GIR toppled off his head and stared at the place where his right hand had been a moment before, then went back to chewing up the few waffles he had left. The laser that had been aimed at Zim had missed and hit GIR's wrist instead.  
  
"You filthy HUMAN!" Zim spat at COD1. " _I'm_  the only one that can blast the hands off of Irken robots!"   
  
He looked so pathetic that COD1 laughed. "Small green thing! You no can hurt--"  
  
Robotic spider legs sprang from Zim's PAK once more and, just as Dib yelled "Zim! DON'T!!" fired a white-blue laser at COD1, who blew up in a smoldering pile of metal and fizzing wires. Zim gawked. Huh! He was... a robot. Well. That was why he didn't smell like human, then.  
  
Suddenly something heavy smashed into the side of his head and he fell to the ground, dazed. He looked up to see that another of the identical Guards--presumably a robot like his companion--had struck him with his gun. They all converged on him and pushed Dib and Gaz out of the circle.  
  
"You kill COD1!" one of the Guards shouted in disgust. He pronounced the name like "Cody," which seemed  _really_  stupid. The Guard raised his gun in one hand like a club, as if it weighed nothing at all, and brought it crashing down toward the undersized alien. Zim gasped and rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding being crushed by it.  
  
"Kill it!" One of the guard robots yelled. It was impossible to tell which one. Several more lasers erupted from their blasters but scorched the sidewalk around Zim. He got to his feet but still nothing hit him. These robots had  _terrible_  aim! They were no match for him.  
  
Raston swung another gun at him but he ducked and it missed him by several inches. Zim stuck his tongue out in disdain and turned to push his way through the crowd.  
  
"I got small robot!" a gruff voice said triumphantly. Zim whipped around and saw that one of the Guards was holding up GIR by one of his physics-defying legs. Zim tried to make his way over to them but he was quickly surrounded on all sides by the bulky automatons, one of which aimed a kick at him. Zim made a strangled noise and crumpled to the ground, once again clutching his squeedily-spooch with his eyes streaming.  
  
"Ugly green kid," Raston grunted. "We kill it now?"  
  
"Yeah. It kill COD1."  
  
Zim froze, and suddenly found that twelve guns were trained on his head.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Well...  _this_  was a setback. Dib pulled Gaz away from the Guards who had all moved toward Zim, determined to kill him for destroying one of their comrades. And, while nothing would make Dib happier than to see Zim dead and splayed out on an autopsy table, they unfortunately needed him alive if Dib had any hope of escaping back to the real world.  
  
"Come on, Gaz, you have to get out of here!" Dib said, trying to move his sister from the fight. Gaz shrugged him off and stayed where she was.  
  
"Why?" she asked. "Finally something  _interesting_  is happening."  
  
Dib groaned. "Okay.  _Fine_. Help me get Zim out of there, then. We still need him to fix the portal."  
  
" _You_  still need him to fix the portal."  
  
"Look, Gaz, I don't  _want_  to ask for his help, but he's the only chance I've got! If you don't care about helping me, like usual, go on back home!" Without waiting to see what Gaz would do he turned and ran around the ring of gorilla-like robots, but already he felt bad about what he had said. He didn't usually snap at her like that.  _I'll have to apologize,_  he thought. But not right now. The Guards were aiming their guns at a dazed Zim and were talking about killing him. What to do? What to do? Dib had only seconds to act and he didn't have any weapons or anything. He came to the chain-link fence that surrounded the Skool and grabbed onto it, climbing upward. When he had reached a height that was above the heads of the Guards he paused. Then he did the only thing he could think of to cause a distraction. He reached into his pocket, pulled out Membrane's broken locator device, and flung it as hard as he could at Raston's head. It met its mark with a  _clang_  and the robots instantly all looked up at the sky in confusion as if wondering why it would be raining metal.  
  
Zim took this as his chance.   
  
Eyes still watering from the pain of the kick he had received, he stood with a harsh battle cry and lashed out with all four spider legs mounted on his back. They tore into the metal armor of his assailants, sending the robots reeling. Zim ran toward the Guard holding GIR. His spider legs came together and shot another beam of light, blasting the Guard's arm off. The one-handed GIR dropped safely to the ground. Zim picked him up and leapt into the air on his long, spindly robotic legs, scuttling away like a spider.  
  
Dib, still clinging to the fence, watched the spectacle in astonishment and shook his head. Carefully he lowered himself down from the fence and brushed off his coat, looking around. Zim and GIR had vanished. They were undoubtedly heading toward the portal.  _We have to catch up to them!_  Dib thought in a panic. Zim couldn't be allowed to leave this dimension until he fixed the portal! Dib started to run back around the group of robots, scanning his surroundings for signs of where Zim had gone when a laser seared the ground alarmingly close to him and he lurched away, his heart pounding.  
  
"A friend of green killer kid!" one of the Guards shouted, and fired another laser at Dib.  
  
"Zim is  _not_  my friend!" Dib shouted. Why did everyone think that? They wanted each other dead! "AUGHH!" He dodged another laser and dashed away, feeling the blasts of the guns hitting the ground inches from his feet.  _I'm going to be killed!_  he thought in horror.  
  
A sudden tightening sensation around his shoulders stopped him short and he was yanked sharply into the air until he dangled several feet above the ground.   
  
"Nyah!" Dib gasped in surprise and struggled, trying to figure out what had just happened. One of the Guards held him up to its eye level and leered at him. Dib realized that the thing was holding him up by the back of his coat. He dropped his arms in frustration. Great. Just great. Why, oh  _why_  did he  _insist_  on wearing that stupid trench coat?! He tried to wrench his arms out of the imprisoning sleeves, but it was no use.  
  
"I got one," Dib's captor said proudly, holding him up like a prize. Dib had to keep himself from shaking. Zim and GIR would surely have made it at least halfway back to the portal by now. They would close it, leaving no other way to get back to the real world. Stupid alien. Didn't he realize that Dib had just saved his miserable life? And who knew where Gaz was?  
  
"I got other ones." Another of the Guards walked up and Dib saw, to his astonishment, that he clutched a squirming Zim by the head in one hand and a cheerful GIR in the other. Dib felt a mix of relief and irritation. So Zim hadn't escaped and closed the portal yet. There was still time. But Dib glared at him.  _I just got captured because I tried to help him get away!_  he thought in annoyance. And of course the idiotic extraterrestrial had gotten himself caught anyway. Probably just to be spiteful.  
  
The robots surrounded them again. One was herding Gaz in front of it. She walked calmly... as if this sort of thing happened every day. Dib gaped at her. Why hadn't she left? She had her stupid game back. Why hadn't she gone back home?  
  
The Guards were all glaring at Zim. "You kill COD1," they said again.  
  
One poked the defeated alien and looked around at his brothers. "We kill him again?"  
  
The one called Raston shook his head. "No, we take them all with us. Show them to Boss."  
  
 _Hey, those were almost complete sentences,_  Dib thought dully.  _That robot must be a little smarter than the rest._  Not like it mattered. The Guards began carrying them away from the Skool, toward some unknown destination. Dib's mind whirled as he tried to think of a way out of this. They had to get away and get to the portal. He knew that Gaz could get through fine, but he would be stuck here unless he could somehow get Zim to fix the portal. There was no one else that could do it. And what would happen after that? Would he leave Zim and GIR stuck in here forever? Trapped with no way back? For the first time Dib thought about how Zim must feel to be so far from other Irkens. No creature wanted to be completely separate from its own kind. And if Zim was trapped in this alternate world, he would never again see his own species or his family again. Assuming the lizard  _had_  some kind of family. Dib shook hs head to drag his mind back to reality. What was he thinking?! This was Zim--an alien invader--bent on human destruction and world domination! It wasn't as if Zim felt any pity for the people he was trying to conquer.  _I have to get out of here,_  Dib reminded himself. _And Zim poses too great of a threat to be allowed to roam free._  
  
But all he could do at the moment was swing back and forth, dangling helplessly as the Guards marched them ever onward. Dib wished he'd at least be allowed to walk--but he was afraid of requesting this. The robots were apparently only interested in GIR and wouldn't think twice before shooting an outspoken, eleven-year-old paranormal investigator. They probably wouldn't even think once.  
  
Dib glanced over at the Guard that was carrying Zim and his turquoise-colored android minion. GIR was once again munching the waffles clutched in his remaining hand. One of the Guards snatched the waffles away from him.  
  
"No eat!" he snarled. "This is... evvydents."  
  
"Right!" another one agreed. "Eddyvents!"  
  
GIR teared up. "My waffles!" he wailed. Then he brightened. "Let's play 'I Spy!' I spy Dib!"  
  
"Oh, you rotten sniveling DIB!" Zim shouted angrily, as if just now noticing that his mortal enemy was in the vicinity. He pointed a trembling hand at Dib. "This is  _your_  fault!"  
  
Dib clenched his fists but said nothing. Now was not the time to get into a pointless argument.  
  
After a good while their captors finally stopped in front of a building that seemed hauntingly familiar, but in the dark Dib couldn't really tell why it struck him as such. At last he was set down with a jolt and he rolled his shoulders to relieve them of the stiffness from being carried by his coat. He thought about trying to run but the robot grabbed his arm in an iron grip (no pun intended), dispelling any such hopes. Zim and GIR were also dropped to the ground and restrained in similar fashions, while Gaz was not. She had walked the entire distance and didn't seem to intent on running away.  
  
"We are back!" one of the Guards announced in the direction of the building.  
  
And then a voice issued quietly from the darkness. Dib's eyes widened at the sound and his jaw dropped as horror filled him. No. It couldn't be!  
  
"Did you get the little robot?" the voice asked.   
  
The Guards looked around to check that they indeed had GIR in their possession, then one nodded. "Yeah. And we have others."  
  
"Others?" the voice repeated. "What others? You mean you have other prisoners? What am I supposed to do with  _them_?"  
  
On of the robots scratched his head. "I... don' know."  
  
Dib glanced at Gaz to see if she was hearing the same thing he was hearing. She had one eyebrow raised but otherwise her face was expressionless. Dib glanced over at Zim, but he didn't seem to be paying attention to what was going on around him. And it was no use looking at GIR. He was most likely still trying to play 'I Spy.'  
  
"Anyway, you came at just the right time, I think," the voice went on calmly. "I was just finishing a sketch for a new... idea. Thing."  
  
The voice hadn't changed. It was the same. And despite all of Dib's fervent wishing, he knew who was talking to them from the dark. He knew why this building looked so familiar. And he knew he may now be in very great danger.  
  
Out from the darkness of the garage, carrying a sketchbook and a pencil, stepped  _himself_.


	6. Stop the World I Wanna Get Off

The Dib that emerged from the garage looked almost the same as his opposite, though with a different taste in clothing. Everything he wore was white; except for his shirt, which was a muddy brown. Over that he had on a long white labcoat. There was a pencil tucked behind his ear and he was staring at his notebook as he walked.

Dib, the real one, gawked at his Alternate. Especially when he realized that the other version of himself wasn't wearing glasses.  _Is he wearing contacts?_  he wondered.  _Or is it just some sort of weird other-dimensional thingy where he's the opposite of me, so his eyesight is fine?_  Either way, it was an interesting thought, but not really the best thing to be pondering when he could be a mere few feet from death. The slightest contact between himself and his Alternate could result in them both being obliterated. Dib pressed back against the robot holding him captive and hunched his shoulders, attempting to hide his face in the collar of his trenchcoat. No need to show his opposite who he was. No need to bring any attention to himself.

The Alternate glanced up from his notebook at last and stared at the prisoners with a look of confusion. "And... who are  _they?_ " He peered at them with light brown eyes. Dib's eyes.

Dib shuddered.

"Pris'ners," one of the Guards, the one with the nametag labeled "Raston," said. He sounded proud of the fact that twelve giant robots armed with laser guns had managed to detain two kids, an alien, and a hyperactive android. "We catched them with-"

"FOOLS!" Zim screamed suddenly. The robot holding him captive was pinning both of his arms by his side, and he struggled fiercely. "Me?  _Prisoner?_  You will regret the day you attempted to capture Invader Zim! REGRET IT!"

"No need to yell. And besides, you  _have_  been captured," Alternate-Dib pointed out. "That wasn"t my fault, though." He turned to address Raston. "I just wanted the  _waffles!_  And maybe the annoying little robot, for revenge, and all that jazz. You didn"t have to grab everyone else who happened to be in the vicinity."

"But they kill COD1!" Raston protested. Alternate-Dib did a quick headcount of his robots.

"Ah. You're right," he said, noticing there were only eleven. "COD1's gone. Well, then. This changes...  _everything._ "

That didn't sound good. That didn't sound good at all.

"Which one of them killed COD1?" Alt.-Dib asked.

Raston pointed to Zim. "He did."

" _Him?_  But he's so... so... I dunno. Short."

Dib bit his lip, hoping that Zim wouldn't say anything. He had to concentrate and try to figure out a way out of-

"Of course I didn't do it, you stupid... HEAD!" Zim shouted at Dib's Alternate. "You can never hope to outwit an Invader,  _DIB!_  I WILL escape and then-"

Alt.-Dib started. "How do you know my name?" he demanded.

Zim laughed. "You're even stupider than you  _look_ , puny Earth-monkey! How did you get me here, anyway? And your ugly filth-coat changed color!"

"...Yeah..." Alt.-Dib said, his brow furrowed. "...You're a  _lunatic_."

Dib stared at Zim out of the corners of his eyes. The stupid extraterrestrial was acting even more delusional than he usually did. He seemed to think Alt.-Dib was actually... Dib.

Alt.-Dib shook his head and looked at Raston again. "Did you at least get  _some_  of the waffles?" he asked.

Gaz, standing beside Dib, muttered darkly, "I'm sick of everyone being obsessed with waffles." Dib was pretty sure he was the only one who heard her.

In response to the Alternate's question, Raston held out the few waffles he had managed to salvage from GIR. Alt.-Dib glared at them, then rolled his eyes.

"Those aren't  _enough_ , Raston. Well, fine.  _That_  was a waste of time and energy..." He dropped his notebook, took the waffles from Raston and flung them into the yard, then turned back to the prisoners. "See, those waffles were full of a hypnotic serum I got from... a shady source I'd rather not mention... but I was going to invite all of the world leaders here for a Waffle Jamboree. I'd feed the hypnotic waffles to the world leaders and have them all under my control... but then that stupid robot there  _ATE_  them all!" He paused. "The waffles. He ate all the waffles, not the world leaders. That'd be weird."

GIR smiled and burped happily.

"You speak craziness, DIB!" Zim shouted after the Alternate's rant. "I don't know what you're blathering on about! Release me at-"

"MY HAND'S GONE!" GIR suddenly screeched, looking at his stump of a wrist. Then he promptly went back to smiling and humming to himself.

"What is  _wrong_  with you two?" Alt.-Dib demanded, gesturing to Zim and GIR. He glared at Zim. "Are you a loony house escapee or something? And where did that little robot  _come_  from, anyway? It seems more advanced than the usual electronics you get around here."

"It's not advanced, it's just stupid," Gaz said.

"Stupid. Yes, I can tell. It's almost stupid enough to have been made by me," Alt.-Dib mused aloud. He shook his head. "That's not like it sounds! I make robots stupid on purpose. So they don't become self-aware and start not listening to me, and taking over everything." He blinked. "It's happened!" He walked over to stand in front of Zim, then paced in front of the other prisoners. "Okay, enough distractions. What do we have here, anyway? Let's see... the lunatic boy with what looks like a really terrible skin condition, the annoying little robot that ruined my plans, a purple-haired girl, and this kid over here who hasn't said anythi-hm, you look kind of like me." He was staring right at Dib, causing the latter's blood to run cold. Alt.-Dib wrinkled his nose. "Except your head is bigger. And your hair is awful."

"My head's not big!" Dib protested, unable to keep silent any longer. "And...  _your_  hair is exactly the same!"

Alt.-Dib shrugged. "But on  _me_  it actually works." He fell silent for a moment, looking at Dib with his eyes narrowed, as if lost in thought. A breeze blew through, bringing a chill. He shivered and said, "It's the middle of the night. There's no sense talking out here in the cold. Raston! COD-um, other Guards! Bring the prisoners into the house, I guess. Just keep a close eye on them." He turned and headed toward the house, with all of the Guards starting to shuffle along behind him. "No, not  _all_  of you! Just the ones with prisoners!"

With noises of disappointment, the majority of the group dropped off and Dib, along with Zim, GIR, and Gaz, was pushed through the door into his Alternate's house.

"Put COD1's killer in  _that_  chair. Who knows what else he might be capable of..." Alt.-Dib nodded to a metal chair with clamps on the armrests and legs. Dib couldn't help staring at it. He gulped. What kind of person kept a chair like  _that_  in their living room?

One of the Guards set the struggling Zim onto the chair. The clasps immediately clamped over his wrists and his ankles, binding him securely to it. He attempted to jerk away but it was no use. "RELEASE ME!" he yelled.

The Guard gripping Dib's arm pushed him toward an armchair on the other side of the room. "Sit," the robot said, releasing him. Dib reluctantly clambered into the chair and braced himself to be bound to it. Nothing happened. Still, he gripped the armrests so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

Gaz, whom the Guards gave a wider berth than any of the other prisoners, walked in and stood beside Dib's chair, scowling. GIR was dumped onto a red couch by Zim's chair, with a Guard standing at attention on each side. Alt.-Dib stood at the front of the room with his hands clasped behind his back, facing them.

"As much as I hate saying this," he said, "I can't help but be intrigued by you all. Where did you come from? One of you ruined my plan, another destroyed my 'indestructible' robot, and still another of you is my alternate self, from some other dimension."

"You  _know_  about that?" Dib asked, completely surprised.

"Well, what  _else_  could you be?" Alt.-Dib scoffed. "You look just like me, and I  _have_  read about these things. I suppose you could be some sort of clone... but I've made sure that cloning me would be impossible." He narrowed his eyes at Gaz. "And you must be my  _sister's_ alternate self."

"Your sister?" Dib repeated. He wondered what an alternate version of Gaz might be like. No, best not to think about that.

"Yes..." the Alternate turned to Zim. "But I really don't have a clue who  _you_  are."

Zim straightened up and glared at Alt.-Dib. "I am Invader Zim, one of the Irken elite! And the Armada will hear about this!"

Alt.-Dib raised an eyebrow. "You just say the same insane stuff over and over again, don't you."

"You have no idea," Gaz said.

"So... you  _know_  that we're opposites," Dib said to his Alternate. "I've been thinking about that... since we're the opposite of each other, why aren't you incredibly stupid?"

"Well  _you're_  modest, aren't you!" Alt.-Dib sneered. "What on Earth makes you think that I should be stupid just because you think you're so smart?"

Suddenly the door leading to the garage burst open and a man who looked vaguely like Professor Membrane dashed out. He wore sunglasses rather than goggles and his labcoat was filthy and torn. He ran over to Alt.-Dib and leaned down to talk to him. "Look! Look, Dib!" Alternate-Membrane accidentally spat what looked like tuna salad sandwich all over Alt.-Dib's face when he spoke. "Look what I just invented!" He triumphantly held up a circular object on a stick. "See? IT SPINS! What should I call it?"

"Dad. It's a  _wheel_ ," Alt.-Dib said, wiping off his face, "and they've already been invented. Where've you been for the last three thousand years?"

"Probably in the kitchen!" Alternate-Membrane said. "I need more tuna salad!" He skipped happily off, presumably into the kitchen.

"Good riddance," Alt.-Dib said. Dib watched as his alternate self casually pulled a knife out of his labcoat pocket and flipped it open, twirling it around in his fingers as if he did it all the time. He seemed to be thinking. "So, where were we? Ah, yes. The green kid destroyed COD1, you are my Alternate, and you're all with the robot that ruined my plan..."

"Gaz and I aren't with the robot!" Dib said immediately. "Only the ALIEN is with the robot!"

Alt.-Dib dropped the knife. "...What alien?"

Dib, hoping he wouldn't be shot for daring to move, let go of his armrest and pointed at Zim. "There! Right there! He's an alien!"

"He's LYING!" Zim shouted. "The Earth-boy is trying to condemn me with his filthy LIES and-" He stopped and looked from Dib to Alt.-Dib in confusion. "Dib! Why are there  _two_  of you?"

Alt.-Dib was staring at Zim with wide, horrified eyes. "You're... you're an alien?" His voice cracked.

"How did you gain access to cloning technology?" Zim demanded of Dib, completely ignoring the Alternate.

"Yes, he's an alien!" Dib said. The thought that he was trying to prove to  _himself_  that Zim was an alien was just bizarre. "Pull off his wig, you'll see his antennae!"

"I KNEW IT!" Zim yelled. Dib didn't even try to comprehend what the Irken meant by that.

Alt.-Dib's face still showed terror, but it twisted into a sneer. "I'll see his 'antennae,'" he mocked. "I'm sure." He snapped his fingers at one of the Guards. "You! See if the weird kid is wearing a wig."

The Guard he was addressing glanced from Zim to Dib, then promptly grabbed Dib's hair spike and yanked upward.

"OUCH!" Dib cried, grabbing his hair and leaning away from the robot.

Alt.-Dib waved his arms wildly. "No! No, no, not  _that_  weird kid! The other one! The loud one with green skin!"

The Guard immediately let Dib go and went over to Zim.

"NO! I'm normal! I'M NORMAL!" Zim lurched from side to side-but the chair, which must have been attached to the ground somehow, didn't move; and his hands and ankles remained bound. He ducked his head and cringed as the Guard reached down and pulled off his toupee, revealing his one whole antenna and the stump of the other one.

Alt.-Dib turned several shades paler and backed away until he crashed into the television. "It's an... it's an... an..."

"An alien?" Dib prompted. "What, you couldn't tell by the fact that he's missing ears and a nose? Or that he's got a lizard tongue? Or that he's green? Or that he keeps yelling about being an invader?"

"It's not true!" Zim said quickly. "I'm normal! Perfectly normal! And I love Earth because I'm a hideous normal Earthenoid human!" His eyes moved upward in an attempt to look at his antennae, and Dib realized how strange it was to see him wearing only half of his disguise. "These aren't antennae! They're... they're... eh... a horrible medical condition! Caused by my skin condition! The whole thing is very tragic, yes."

"Don't listen to him!" Dib said, jumping up to stand on his chair. " _He's_  the one who's lying!"

"YOU'RE LYING!"

"No,  _you_  are!"

Alt.-Dib still looked as if he had seen a ghost. "It's an... alien...?"

"No he's not, he's made o' cheese!" GIR squealed. "We from the egg planet filled with bacon and tater tots, WHOO!"

"Yes, he's an alien!" Dib said exasperatedly. "What about this don't you understand?"

"Nothing. I understand perfectly." Without taking his eyes off Zim, Alt.-Dib walked back to the middle of the room and picked up his knife from the floor. "Nobody move! Nobody. MOVE." He held up the knife, shakily pointing the tip in Zim's direction. "What  _other_  paranormal creatures do you have here? Is this alien the only one? Or are there others lurking around?"

Dib carefully sank back into his chair. No one noticed the movement. "Um, no. He's the only one."

Alt.-Dib seemed to relax slightly, though he still had the knife pointed at Zim. "Good. And he's restrained, so he'll be easy enough to kill. It'll be a good way to break in my newest knife."

Well  _that_  had to be one of the creepiest statements Dib had ever heard.

And wait! The Alternate wanted to  _kill_  Zim? Dib clenched his fists. He still needed Zim to fix the portal! Maybe he shouldn't have-

"Guards, keep an extra-close eye on that alien," Alt.-Dib commanded. Two of the Guards obediently stepped behind Zim's chair and gripped it. "Now." The Alternate flipped the knife into the air as if by habit, caught it again, and stowed it in his pocket. Then he turned his interest to Dib. "So... you're an alternate version of me. What are you doing in the company of this... alien?"

"It wasn't my choice! He built a portal and somehow we all ended up here," Dib replied. Not that great of an answer, but it was true. He still couldn't remember how he himself had actually ended up in this dimension.

"But what's your view on paranormal things? If we're opposites... what do  _you_  think of them?"

"I... study them," Dib said, wondering what the Alternate was getting at. "I... I... well, you know, studying the paranormal has been a hobby of mine for... well, actually, it's been my passion and my way of life for as long as I can remember! I've been cataloguing sightings and encounters, as well as documenting evidence on-"

"But are you  _afraid_  of them?" Alt.-Dib asked impatiently.

Dib was taken aback. "No! Paranormal happenings don't scare me!"  _Otherwise, why would I be studying them?_  He didn't voice this thought aloud.

Alt.-Dib nodded in approval. "Okay. You're hired."

"...Hired?" For what? What was going on?

"To get rid of anything paranormal!" Alt.-Dib said, suddenly sounding excited. "Those are the main things that have been keeping me from taking over the world. Ghosts. And aliens. And whatever else. But mostly ghosts. They're  _everywhere._ "

Dib couldn't believe his ears. "You want me to  _stay here_  and-"

"But you said they don't bother  _you_ ," Alt.-Dib went on, without seeming to hear. "You said you know a lot about them, so you could get rid of them for me. You and I could work together! We'd be an unstoppable team-it would be magical!"

Dib crossed his arms. That sounded eerily familiar.

"Uhm, these manacles are cutting off the circulation to my feet," Zim broke in, still pulling a bit at his bonds.

Alt.-Dib continued to talk. "Of course, you couldn't come within a five-foot radius of me," he said to Dib. "I've heard that if Alternates touch, they're both erased from existence. And to me that sounds like a fancy term for ' _death_.'"

 _I've heard the same thing,_  Dib thought.  _Does that mean it's true?_  He thought about Gaz. Where was  _her_  Alternate? What if the other Gaz appeared out of nowhere suddenly and... He still hadn't apologized to his sister for what he had said when they were being attacked by the Guards. They needed to get out of here, fast.

But from what his Alternate was saying, it sounded like paranormal happenings were much more abundant here. And maybe people in this dimension would actually believe him!

Perhaps staying wouldn't be such a bad idea after all...

Alt.-Membrane stuck his head back into the room. "Oh, hey, Dibbers! Almost forgot, I noticed you have some friends over! Should I get them some tuna salad, TOO? Or how about some of my world-renowned liver and onions? They're DELICIOUS!"

"Um, no, Dad, I think we're fine," Alt.-Dib said flatly.

Alt.-Membrane nodded. "Cool, cool. Peace out!" He ducked back into the kitchen.

"See what I have to put up with?" Alt.-Dib demanded of his prisoners. "Do you  _see?_  Killing people is my only joy in life." He pulled out his knife again and stroked the blade. "This is my new knife," he said. "I call it... uh... Mincer.  _Creepy_  name. So what do you say, Opposite? After I kill these guys, want to work together?"

"I... I don't know..." Dib said. "But  _KILL?_  But-"

"Dib!" Gaz suddenly shouted. She reached over and stuck her Game Slave in Dib's face. "What did you do to my game cartridge? I've been fiddling with it and it won't turn on! If you've caused permanent damage to my favorite game..." Her fists shook with fury and she didn't bother finishing her threat.

"Wow, I'm about to kill all you guys and you're just standing there playing video games?" Alt.-Dib sounded impressed. " _That's_  pretty cool. You guys gotta admit that's pretty cool!"

"I'm  _not_  playing video games because Dib did something to my game!" Gaz said. "I can't even figure out what's wrong with it."

"What kind of games do you play?" Alt.-Dib asked excitedly, coming over to stand beside her but making sure to keep Zim within his sights. "I  _love_  video games, myself. Playing them is my only joy in life."

"I thought you just said killing people was your only joy in life?" Dib said, almost sarcastically. He was completely ignored.

Alt.-Dib moved away from Gaz. "I've decided! I'll kill the  _alien_  first. Those paranormal-y creepy-crawly things deserve to DIE! And like I said, I need to break in my new knife." He kissed Mincer's blade.

"This guy's disturbing," Dib muttered. "I can't believe we're related."

"Shut up, Opposite!" Alt.-Dib said, pointing his knife at Dib. "Once I kill the alien and the robot, it'll be your job to take care of the other paranormal things around here. But I want to play a quick game of Vampire Piggies with my sister's Alternate, because Vampire Piggies is my most favorite game EVVA! Then I'll kill her, too."

Gaz sighed and started fiddling with her game again. "Don't be more of an idiot than you can help, Other-Dib. I'm your sister."

Alt.-Dib rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. You're not my sister.  _She's_  my sister." He pointed to a familiar-looking girl holding a box, who had just come in through the door.

Dib stared. It was the girl who had come to warn them about the Guards!

"Hey, y'all!" Alternate-Gaz said, her eyes wide and sparkling. "Want some cupcakes? They're baked with LOVE!"

Everyone gaped at her. Dib shivered. Okay, this was worse than that nightmare world he was pulled into on Halloween. This was  _traumatizing_. It was much easier to see Gaz's Alternate indoors than it had been outside in the dark, and that made the horror even worse. Alt.-Gaz was wearing a frilly pink dress, white stockings, and white shoes. Her purple hair was streaked with pink and pulled up into a bun, fixed into place with a pin in the shape of a butterfly. She even seemed to have glitter sprinkled across her face.

"Forget it!" Alt.-Dib shouted, pointing at Alt.-Gaz. "You're embarrassing me in front of the prisoners! You know what? You're not my sister either, Gaz! And that idiot in the kitchen making tuna salad is  _not_  my father! I am disowning myself from this family!"

"Aw, don't leave!" Alternate-Gaz said. "I  _wuv_  you!"

"This. Is. Sickening," Gaz muttered. She pulled away from the guards and started walking toward the door. "I'm going back home."

"You're not going anywhere!" Alt.-Dib called. "I still want to play that game!"

Gaz turned and said, "Hey Crazier-Dib, there's a ghost behind you."

Alt.-Dib let out a blood-curdling shriek, dropped his knife again, and whirled around with his hands up to protect his face. He looked back and forth spasmodically, shaking, and turned around to see a smirk from Gaz. "There  _was_  no ghost, was there," he said softly.

Zim laughed. "HAH, Dib-"

"AND  _YOU!_ " Alt.-Dib spun around to face Zim and threw his knife in the same movement. The blade flew through the air and imbedded itself into the wall millimeters from Zim's neck. Zim gasped and pulled away from it, though his chair still did not move. Alt.-Gaz shrieked at the sight of the knife and ran from the room.

" _Missed,_ " Alt.-Dib cursed. "No matter, I'll kill you later. I still have a knife with me. Some people say I have an obsession." He pulled yet another knife from his pocket and bared his teeth at Gaz. "Think you can mock me, do you?"

Dib and Gaz stared at the Alternate. He had nearly killed Zim. He would have killed the alien with hardly a thought. And now he was threatening Gaz... she took an involuntary step back.

"Afraid of knives, are we?" Alt.-Dib said with his eyes narrowed. "There's a  _knife_  behind you, you know. RIGHT. Behind you."

Gaz scowled at him and took another step back; one of the Guards came up behind her and grabbed her arm, preventing her from going anywhere.

Dib kneeled on his chair, his heart pounding. He should do something! But this was Gaz they were trying to attack. GAZ. She'd be fine. They wouldn't be able to hurt  _her_ , right?

Gaz was still frowning at the knife-wielding Alt.-Dib. "You look ridiculous," she said. "Put that thing away before you hurt yoursel-"

Alt.-Dib let out an inhuman cry and dashed forward, his knife poised to strike. Gaz tried to pull away from the Guard holding her, but the robot was too strong. And, for the briefest of instances, and for the first time that Dib had ever seen, Gaz's eyes opened and fear flashed through them.

 _I could never beat her in a fight,_  Dib realized.  _Which means my_  opposite  _self..._

There was no time to think. No time to consider what would happen. Dib leapt off the chair with a yell, catapulting into his Alternate and bowling him over.

"AAAUGH! You IDIOT!" Alt.-Dib screamed when Dib rolled away and got to his feet. The Alternate pulled himself to his knees. "Do you know what you've DONE? You touched me! We're going to be obliterated!" True to his word, the two opposites had begun to glow.

Dib turned to Gaz, his breathing heavy. "Look, I'm sorry for what I said by the Skool earlier," he said miserably. "And I... I guess now you can delete all those Mysterious Mysteries episodes you hate so much."

"What-"

Dib turned to Alt.-Dib, giving him a dark, poisonous look. "Oh, and by the way, your offer is declined."

Alt.-Dib jumped to his feet and turned to one of the Guards. "Do something!" he commanded. "Kill them! Stop this!"

"Hurr, Boss, you look like lightbulb," the Guard replied. Alt.-Dib backed away and stared at him in horror, as both he and Dib glowed brighter and brighter.

Gaz could only watch, wide-eyed, as her brother and his Alternate disappeared in a flash... and vanished from existence.


	7. Now I Only Want You Gone

A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed/commented! :D This chapter wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you... I mean that. When I started writing this story (a year ago) I never got farther than chapter six, and earlier on I was considering giving up. But people like it, so here's chapter seven! :) Sorry that it's kind of short. Also, I thought it was funny that the actual transit of Venus happened a little while ago.

* * *

For a long while, the room was silent. Completely. Gaz, still held captive by one of the Guards, was conscious of her breathing, in and out, in and out... her heart pounding in her head. She stared at the spot where her brother and his Alternate had disappeared. Even Zim, whom she had completely forgotten about, was gawking at the place where his archenemy had been standing moments before.

Then a high pitched singing voice carried over from behind the closed kitchen door, " _Don't stop, make it drop, DJ blow my speakers up... tonight, Imma fight, 'til we see deh sunlight! Tick tock, on the clock, but the party don't stop, no..._ "

The spell broke. Gaz snapped back to her senses and yanked her arm away from the Guard's grasp at the same time as he released her, sending her crashing into the armchair. Zim struggled against his own restraints once more and shouted, "GIR! GIR, get me outta here!"

"Boss is gone," one of the Guards, Raston, said slowly.

The robots blinked dully at one another as if pondering what to do now.

"COFFEE BREAK!" one suggested in delight. They all brightened at that, made noises of approval, and filed into the kitchen. The door closed behind them but slammed open again a few seconds later. One of the Guards reappeared, carrying GIR by the back of his head. He dropped GIR onto the floor and went back into the kitchen.

GIR had a mixing bowl in his arms and was holding a whisk with his good hand, stirring the bowl's contents and continuing with his song. " _I'm talkin' pedicure on our toes, toes..._  hi, Master!"

Gaz narrowed her eyes at him. He must have gone into the kitchen when they were talking to Alternate-Dib and no one had noticed.

"There you are! GIR, assist your master! Let me out of this chair!" Zim said.

"I'm makin' you a cake, Master!" GIR chirped, and didn't make a move to get up.

"Are all of you okay?" a small voice asked. A little girl with purple hair tied in a bun on her head peeked around a doorframe into the living room. She glanced about and crept inside. Her hands were clasped in front of her and her fingers twitched. "I'm... sorry my brother was so mean to you. I was trying to distract him and his robots with cupcakes. He... he likes knives."

Gaz clenched her fists. "You mean  _liked_. He's  _dead_ ," she said shortly. Her tongue felt heavy.

At her words Zim locked his eyes on her. "Hey! Dibsister!" he called. "Release me!"

Gaz crossed the room so fast that she wasn't aware of her feet touching the ground. She grabbed the front of Zim's magenta uniform and yanked him forward in his chair so they were eye-to-eye. "This is  _your_  fault," she hissed. " _All_  of this."

Zim pulled away from her and cracked the back of his head on the chair. He winced. "All...all of  _what?_  Everything has gone according to plan!"

Gaz opened her eyes and looked at him with such disdain that he flinched involuntarily.

"I can see that," Gaz replied. "That's why you're tied to a chair." She turned and walked soundlessly toward the door.

"WAIT!" Zim cried. He growled at Gaz's retreating form. "Human filth! COME BACK!"

"Human filth?" Alternate-Gaz repeated. "That's not very nice..."

Gaz had had enough. She opened the door and slammed it closed behind her, stepping outside. A cool night breeze rustled her hair and black raincoat. She rubbed her arms and unconsciously allowed her eyes to rove until they locked on the silver moon hanging high above. She was still breathing heavily. Confusion and uncertainly flitted through her mind-something was wrong. Something inside her was wrong. Nothing had ever happened to warrant a reaction in her like this before. Nothing had ever happened to warrant much of a reaction in her at  _all_ , actually... unless that reaction was anger. But this wasn't anger. Or was it? Whatever it was, it seemed to ache. How stupid.

"I can go home now," she said aloud. Funny. She never talked out loud to herself. That was something Di-that was something she never did. The thought of going home seemed foreign to her. It was as if years had passed tonight.

She stepped lightly down the path from the house, still watching the moon; she imagined herself finding her way back to the portal alone and climbing through, maybe even closing it to trap Zim in here just so he'd stop  _bothering_  her. She imagined herself pouring a bowl of cereal in the morning and greeting her dad when he came back from watching whatever it was he was watching, the transit of Venus or whatever. She thought of playing her video games or reading or drawing all day without being ranted to about Zim or being dragged off somewhere to look for ghosts and werwolves. Going to Skool without being constantly embarrassed. Having a lunch table all to herself. Meeting her dad at Bloaty's instead of rocketing through the sky in a stolen alien escape pod. Years passing, going to Hi Skool and making sure that no one remembered she had ever been anything but an only child.

An only child.

The breeze blew through again and she shivered. A raised voice, distinctly Zim's, was coming from the house. She wondered what he was yelling about but then decided she didn't care. All she knew was that she had to get out of here. And when she got back home, and her dad returned from what he was watching-the transit of Venus or whatever-would he even notice that something was different?

Maybe. Eventually. She wasn't even sure of what her father would think about losing one of his children.

She frowned and stomped her feet against the cold. This was stupid. She couldn't stand out here freezing and brooding about... things. So it was a little different now. Change happened. What did she care.

She heard the echo of a voice,  _"Look, I'm sorry... And I guess now you can delete all those Mysterious Mysteries episodes you hate so much."_

Gaz shook her head. Why did  _that_  have to come back to her? As if her emotions needed anything else to send them more out of control. Her heart felt like a lump of ice beating in her chest, freezing her. She had already deleted those episodes. She had deleted them because she was mad that her game system had been touched.

But she didn't  _care_. She didn't care about anything.

Right?

With a scowl she reached into her pocket and pulled out the tracking device that Professor Membrane had given her a million years ago. She clutched it tightly, then drew her arm over her head in preparation to fling it as far away from her as she could. But something stopped her. She lowered her hand and squinted at the display screen. In the darkness she could just barely make out the word "Massive." The screen flickered and went back to showing a green arrow, this time not spinning wildly like it had before. It wasn't even pointing at her pocket where the game cartridge it was supposed to be tracking was nestled. It was actually pointing in the opposite direction of where Gaz knew the portal was located. The screen flickered again, going back to read "Massive."

Massive.  _The_  Massive? As in, the Irken ship that Di-that  _he_  had always been talking about? Gaz berated herself. Of course that was what it was. Even the people in her town weren't dumb enough to name something "The Massive." It had to be alien. And everything made by her dad always (well, usually) worked. The device was certainly tracking  _something_. Maybe it was worth following. It wasn't as if she had anything to lose.

Her mind made up, she pulled out her flashlight with her other hand and headed away from the portal. Following the arrow.

* * *

The Dibsister clone was crazy. There was no other explanation. Perhaps she had the BRAIN WORMS. They were common on filthy enemy planets, where there was no concept of hygiene.

Alternate-Gaz was staring at GIR as if there was something fascinating about him. Zim raged at his confinement in the horrible chair. He should not have to put up with indignities such as this! HE WAS ZIM! ZIM!

"That's a SIR Unit, isn't it?" a light voice said. Zim straightened up in shock and he gaped at the Dibsister clone, who was standing near GIR. She was still talking. "A SIR Unit! I thought he was when I first saw him, but-" she tured to Zim and her eyes widened even farther, if that was possible. She took in his appearance, particularly his antenna. "...You're  _Irken_ , aren't you?"

Zim's antenna flicked up. "How do you know-" he demanded. "I mean, I'm perfectly norm-"

"The warning light is blinking!" Alt.-Gaz cut in. "...Oh, sorry to interrupt. But... but it's kind of important."

"Enough with your pitiful nonsense words," Zim said. "GIR, ignore the human and release me from this!"

Alt.-Gaz stepped over to him before he could say another word and flipped a latch on the side of his chair. The clasp on his right wrist opened. She grabbed that arm and stripped off the glove, turning his arm over to examine his palm and the inside of his wrist.

"HEY!" Zim snatched his hand away and began pulling at the clasp on his left arm. "Give me back my glove, dirt child!" he shouted.

Alt.-Gaz's eyes were wide and worried. "You don't understand-"

"I want my glove back. GIVE!" Zim leaned forward as far as he could go and swiped at the air several inches from where the Dibsister clone held the glove.

"Stop it, you're sick!" Alt.-Gaz cried.

Sick? Zim couldn't help glancing at GIR-whatever the SIR Unit had been stirring earlier, it was now all over his head-but through the grime Zim could see that a red light was pulsing softly on the rectangle on GIR's torso. The warning light. But that meant...

"You have to listen to me. I know about Irkens," Alt.-Gaz said urgently. She handed the glove back over to Zim, who snatched it and attempted to slip it back on with one hand still bound.

"You don't know anything about Irkens!" Zim scoffed. "Which I'm... not."

"Yes, I do!" Alt.-Gaz gripped the armrest of Zim's chair. "I've been to the Massive and-"

Zim choked. "The  _Massive?_ "

"Yeah, I go there sometimes! That's how I knew you were Irken. Dib never goes, though, cuz he's scared of 'em."

"The Dib is dead," Zim stated. At least he hoped so. He'd seen the human explode with his own amazing eyes.

"I also know when Irkens are sick," Alt.-Gaz went on, not seeming to notice Zim's comment. "I can tell because your SIR Unit's warning light is on and the veins in your palm and wrist are gray." Zim glared at her but as soon as she averted her gaze to look at the other latches on the side of his chair he examined his hand, and paled.

The Dibsister clone flipped a few more latches on the chair but nothing happened. "I don't know what the sickness is but I know there's a cure on the Massive," Alt.-Gaz continued. "In fact you remind me of... someone... I met there." She glanced up at Zim and her face turned red. Strange.

She finally snapped the right latches and the rest of the manacles binding Zim to his chair sprung open. He hopped to the ground, stumbling a little before circulation completely returned to his feet and he could stand properly. He quickly stepped away from Alt.-Gaz and tugged his glove back on. He also snatched his wig off the floor where it had been discarded and placed it back on his head.

"Will you come with me to the Massive?" Alt.-Gaz begged.

Zim narrowed his eyes at her. He turned his head a bit. "GIR! Analyze!" He held out his hand palm up to the robot. Instead of analyzing it for sickness or poison as Zim had intended, GIR licked it. "URGH!" Zim shrieked, flailing his hand and wiping it furiously on his uniform. " _GIR!_ "

GIR was coughing as if he had tasted something vile.

"Uggghhh... very well." Zim glared at Alt.-Gaz. "I will go to the Massive and find this cure. Come, GIR! And no licking!"

GIR looked at Alt.-Gaz. "You got anymore cupcakes?"

"No, you ate them all," Alt.-Gaz replied.

"Aw." GIR drooped in disappointment.

"Come on, let's go!" Alt.-Gaz picked up a flashlight from the table and started toward the door.

Zim gripped GIR's arm, minding the sludge that covered the robot, and marched lock-kneed after Alt.-Gaz, pushing her out of the way. "I shall lead!" he said. Alt.-Gaz shrugged and stepped aside as they headed out the door and into the night air.

"The Massive's that way." She pointed.

"I know exactly where it is!" Zim snapped. But he changed direction and started heading where the Alternate had indicated. He marched in front, gripping GIR's good wrist and almost dragging the SIR Unit behind him. The Dibsister clone walked beside him excitedly going on and on about... something. Zim wasn't paying attention.

They were quiet for awhile. Zim soon grew irritated of listening to nothing but the hideous chirping of filthy Earth crickets.

"I guess your robot needs his hand repaired." Alt.-Gaz broke the silence.

"Eh, nothing's wrong with his hand," Zim said.

Alt.-Gaz stared at him. "But... it's missing."

"HEY," someone said. They all looked up to see the real Gaz standing on the road, holding a flashlight and some sort of blinking device. "What are  _you_  doing?"

"That does not concern you, pig filth!" Zim said.

"I was wondering where you went!" Alt.-Gaz beamed. "I thought you'd gone off on your own to be all lonely and stuff. Want to come with us? We're going to the Massive to find a cure for Zim's sickness!"

Gaz was silent.

"You can be the caboose!" GIR said, whatever that was supposed to mean. Zim just glared.

Gaz frowned impatiently. Zim was sick? Well, that would explain why he had been forgetting names and acting even weirder than usual. And she was heading to the Massive, too. But these three were the people she would  _least_  have wanted to travel with. Zim and GIR were just annoying, and her alternate self was completely intolerable. She despised the fact that they shared the same name.

"Come on with us!" Alt.-Gaz called.

Gaz walked over to them, still frowning. "Who made  _you_  leader?" she muttered.

" _I_  am leader!" Zim snapped.

Gaz rolled her eyes. But as they moved off again she followed at a good distance. It seemed a better idea to wander around this unknown place as part of a group than by herself, anyway. As long as the infuriating Alternate didn't try to tell her what to do, she would make no comment. And she was getting tired-she realized that she had been up pretty much all night.

* * *

It was a long walk. Much longer than anyone in the group had anticipated. Gaz walked along behind the others, brooding.

No one had mentioned anything. No one had said anything about what had happened at the Alternates' house. Was she the only one who was aware that Di-

Gaz steeled herself.  _Dib._  Making every effort not to say his name was childish and stupid and she should be above dumb stuff like that. But she couldn't shake the weird feeling. Usually if she went somewhere, Dib was beside her step by step and chattering about dumb paranormal things. She wasn't allowed to go anywhere by herself, especially at night. She and Dib went everywhere together. They rarely separated, except when Dib went off to do his "investigating" or Gaz went on a mission of her own. A mission usually involving video games.

"We're almost there!" Alt.-Gaz said at last. She dropped back to keep pace with Gaz. "Hey, Opposite-of-me! What'cha doing back here?"

Gaz opened one of her eyes. "Get away from me," she said.

"What's wrong?" Alt.-Gaz asked, dropping back a little bit. "Hey, you know, we could be sisters! I've never had a sister before."

Gaz whirled around. "What's your problem?" she demanded.

Alt.-Gaz looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Your  _brother_  just died," Gaz answered.

"Oh, he'll be fine!" Alt.-Gaz said with a smile. "All I have to do is clap three times and wish for him to be back!"

Gaz turned away again. Dib had died trying to save her from that knife-wielding moron. How was she supposed to live, knowing that? How dare he do this to her?  _HOW DARE HE?_

"Oh, we're here!" Alt.-Gaz said.

They had come to a tiny aluminum shack on the edge of an empty sandy lot.

"Well where is it?" Zim demanded, his hands on his hips. "Where's the Massive?" Gaz considered him. Zim didn't  _look_  sick. But occasionally he was a bit unbalanced... physically, not mentally, at least not much more than usual... and he sometimes went through phases of not remembering things.

"It's here!" Alt.-Gaz gestured to the shack. "It's just invisible. They have shields on the outside so people can't see it. You have to go into the shack to be able to get to it."

Zim straightened and marched to the shack, with GIR in tow. Alt.-Gaz started to follow but looked back to smile at Gaz. "You know, maybe if you clap three times and wish for your brother to be okay, he'll come back too."

Gaz drew back her fist to punch the Alternate in the face. But she stopped herself, just in time.


	8. That Irksome Little Irken

"Wha--this isn't the  _Massive!_ " Zim scrunched one eye shut and peered around at the unfamiliar surroundings. He had never actually been aboard the Massive. But he knew that the interior couldn't look like this. This was much too small. It was called the "Massive," for Irk's sake! It should be BIG! This was too small, too organized, like a human office building or something. And there was no sign of snack foods anywhere. It must be a trick!  
  
"Looks like an alien ship to  _me_ ," Gaz said. She had emerged from the shack next to Zim and he instinctively shied away from her.  
  
"Oh! Pardon me, but this ship is for Irken access only!" someone said in a faintly British accent. A short female Irken wearing some sort of ugly white tunic ran up to them. "You will have to go back."  
  
"Lit, it's me!" Alternate-Gaz edged to the front of the group. "These guys are with me. Please can we come in?"  
  
"Oh! Gaz!" The Irken stepped back and took in Zim in his disguise, the one-handed GIR, and the two Dibsisters. "...Okay, since it's you. Just... just don't cause any  _trouble_."  
  
"How dare you tell ZIM what to--" Zim snarled at the Irken, who looked at him disdainfully.  
  
"I'm sorry about him, Lit," Alt.-Gaz said. "He's different from all the other Irkens I've met."  
  
"He's  _Irken?_ " 'Lit' said.  
  
"What?" Zim said, horror spiking through him. "No, of course not!" He pressed both hands over his wig, determined that it would not be ripped from his head again.  
  
Alt.-Gaz looked at him in amusement and said, "He is--trust me--and he's sick. I thought we could find a cure here. Do you know where?"  
  
Lit glanced from side to side and tapped her claws together a few times. "You'll have to talk to the Circle," she said, her voice low. "Take the lift to the highest level and check the door at the end of the hall; perhaps they'll speak to you about it."  
  
Zim frowned. What circle? This had nothing to do with geometry!  
  
"Thanks, Lit!" Alt.-Gaz headed off. Lit nodded and turned to go in the opposite direction. Zim hurried after Alt.-Gaz, marching over to reclaim his position at the front of the group.  
  
"This place is preeeeeeetty," GIR marveled, trotting to catch up with Zim. "Where'd Gazzy go?"  
  
Zim glanced around and flicked his antennae under his wig in indifference. The Gaz human was indeed missing. Enh. Didn't matter. He was only here for the cure.  
  
\--  
  
No one noticed her walking along the pristine white tiled floor. This suited Gaz just fine. She didn't need any dumb inter-dimensional aliens getting in her way.  
  
She had the tracking device out again, peering at it. It was much calmer now. No words appeared on the screen. It just showed a slowly-swiveling arrow, like a compass. Gaz continued to head in the direction it pointed. And she still had no idea where it was leading her.  
  
She came to a sleek white door and paused, wondering how to open it--there was no doorknob. Gaz ran her hand over it. It felt completely smooth except for the place where the doorknob  _should_  be, and it buzzed when she touched it. She pressed her palm to it and it glowed green. Tracks of light spread over the door and it slid open. Gaz went on through it. Hmph. Trust Irkens to come up with a stupid way to open a door.  
  
The tracking device led her through another few hallways. Fortunately she didn't meet anyone... until she found herself face-to-face with an Irken.  
  
"Who are you?" The Irken said. It was a female and had something of a British accent, like the one that had tried to stop the group earlier.  
  
"No one." Gaz tried to side-step the Irken, her eyes glued to the tracking device.  
  
The corner of the Irken's mouth lifted. "Well, you  _look_  like someone. What are you doing here, human?"  
  
"Why does that matter to  _you?_ " Gaz peered at the Irken through squinted eyes. This was annoying.  
  
"It matters because it's my ship." The Irken moved aside to let Gaz pass, but kept pace with her. "You may be unwilling to tell me your name, human, but I will tell you mine. It's Tenn. You are in the presence of one of the Irken leaders."  
  
"Great." Was she supposed to be impressed by that? Gaz just wanted to see where the tracking device was leading, then  _leave_.  
  
Tenn--or Alternate-Tenn, Gaz supposed, whoever the real Tenn was--narrowed her eyes at the tracking device. "And what's this?"  
  
Gaz growled and walked a little faster. Alt.-Tenn matched her step for step.  
  
"May I see it?" she asked. When Gaz didn't respond she said, "I could  _order_  you to give it to me, you know. I really don't want to do that."  
  
Ugh. If it would make the alien go  _away_. Gaz stopped and handed over the tracking device, scowling. Alt.-Tenn examined it, held it to the side of her head as if listening for menacing ticking noises, and ran one of her antennae over it.  
  
"Seems to be harmless enough," she said. "Although--" She flipped it over, opened the back, and fiddled with the circuitry. Then she closed it again and handed it back to Gaz. "There you go. Some of the wires were loose. It should work much better now."  
  
Gaz grunted. "Thanks."  
  
"Anytime, of course," Alt.-Tenn said. The two started walking again. "You're welcome to look around here. It is a bit unorthodox to allow humans aboard the Massive, of course, but I doubt you're here for any  _malevolent_  purpose. It's not as if we have anything to be malevolent  _about_. We've been peaceful since we arrived here."  
  
So, the Irken wasn't going to demand Gaz's name or what her business was aboard the ship. That was refreshing.  
  
Speaking of the Irken, Gaz noticed that it had dropped back a little. Gaz looked at her tracking device again. It now showed a simple, flickering floorplan along with the arrow. Then it changed to display a line of text that read, "Bottom level, furthest room, Dib."  
  
Gaz stared. She must have read it wrong. She blinked and read it again.  
  
And again.  
  
It stayed the same.  
  
This thing... it was programmed to track the video game cartridge. But that was in Gaz's pocket. Then again, it hadn't worked when she tried it. And now the tracking device was taking her through an alien spaceship... towards  _Dib?_  
  
Did that mean... Dib was  _alive?_  
  
The screen blinked out, and it changed back to a floorplan. And Gaz couldn't help wondering if the message had been nothing but a figment of her imagination.  
  
\--  
  
Water! It was everywhere! It washed into his ears, his mouth, his nose; plunged him under and spun him around until he couldn't tell which way was up. Was this some sort of comeuppance? Had he gone too far this time?  
  
Something brushed past his hands and he latched onto it. It carried him up until he surged back to the surface. He gulped air into his lungs and scrabbled for a better grip on the thing that had saved him--it was a piece of wood.  
  
He wiped his hair out of his face and frantically cast his gaze around for any sign of land. To his relief the water level was already receding. The sudden surge that had washed through the city was draining out. Only a couple feet of water covered the ground now.  
  
He inhaled deeply and dropped the board. He wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. But whatever it was, it had to somehow be related to--  
  
What was that?  
  
Some sort of shadow had flitted across the water. He looked around wildly and saw something whip around the side of a building.  
  
He stood up and ran after it. His coat dragged in the water and his boots were completely waterlogged but he pushed on, urging himself to go faster... Something was drawing him toward it. The shadow paused at the edge of a building. It turned to look at him--its eyes glinted--and it continued on. Disappeared.  
  
"Hey! Wait!" the boy called, splashing after it. It traveled too quickly for him to keep up. It didn't even seem to be running, or making any contact with the water. It was gliding through the air close to the water's surface. "Waaaaiiiit!"  
  
The thing stopped and looked at him again. This time the boy could clearly see its almond-shaped eyes, glowing blood-red. He stopped in a spray of water and stared. " _MiMi?_ "  
  
He took a step forward but suddenly there was no ground under his feet. Once more his head slipped underwater and he sank, down... down... until he felt as if his lungs would burst.  
  
He couldn't last much longer like this!  
  
 _Thump._  He tell onto something soft and landed in a soaking wet heap. And he could breathe again. Ugh, where was he?  
  
The boy propped himself up with his hands and hacked up what felt like gallons of water. Miraculously his glasses had stayed on his face. He struggled to get his breath back and felt his heart calm down in its frantic hammering. He was in... his living room? Shakily he got to his feet and took a step forward. And out of thin air sprung a spinning yellow vortex... a portal... And somehow, it had been there the whole time.  
  
The boy know he had to get through it. He rushed forward but a force much stranger than him shoved him away. He stumbled, falling back onto the floor.  
  
"Hmph, can't believe you didn't see that coming," a voice said. The boy looked around and saw a very familiar face. It was his sister, chewing neatly on a piece of greasy pizza in her hand. The boy's stomach growled. When was the last time he had eaten?  
  
"I can't get through," he said desperately to her.  
  
The girl shrugged. "Yeah, I know. Go whine about it somewhere else." She started to head away.  
  
"Wait--I'm  _sorry!_ " the boy called. He didn't even know what he was apologizing for. "It's just--"  
  
His sister was gone.  
  
He sighed. With plodding steps he went into the kitchen.  
  
The shadow was back! It darted around the room. The boy chased after it but skidded to a stop. The shadow vanished through the door leading to the garage as though it was nothing more than air. The boy yanked open the door and stepped outside. It was no more than the blink of an eye--but he saw something, something familiar...  
  
" _Dib?_ " someone said in utter shock.  
  
And before Dib could register what he was seeing, a hairy hand grabbed the back of his coat, swung him into the air, and he was whisked off into the woods by Bigfoot.  
  
\--  
  
They took an elevator to the top level of the Massive. The "top level" being the  _fourth floor._  Zim scowled. This was completely wrong! The Massive was enormous! And it had teleporters, not  _elevators!_  
  
"We're here!" the disturbingly cheerful version of the Dibsister said when the elevator doors chimed open. She ran out into the corridor. "Come on guys, this way!"  
  
"This is pathetic, GIR," Zim said when they moved out. "Why are we following this human? She's full of lies and... goo. No... no,  _I'm_ filled with goo."  
  
"I'm bored," GIR moaned.  
  
"She  _lies._  I am not  _sick_ ," Zim said. But his hands... his veins were gray, he had seen it... and GIR's warning light was still blinking... And a SIR's warning light was the most fool-proof way of telling whether the Irken master was ill. He shuddered. He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be at his base. Only there would he find the cure he needed!  
  
"So you all are really from another dimension?" The voice came from Zim's elbow and when he turned he saw Alt.-Gaz standing there smiling up at him.  
  
"AAAHH!" Zim screamed and jumped back a foot.  
  
"Oh, sorry!" Alt.-Gaz said. "But I mean, I heard my brother talking about it with you. It's pretty cool, I think, and... oh, here we are." She pressed her finger to a spot on the wall. It glowed green, and a door opened. They went through it.  
  
This room was brightly lit. Sunlight streamed in through portholes, illuminating a table around which four Irkens sat. They were talking animatedly amongst themselves.  
  
At their arrival, one of the Irkens looked up. "Gaz!" he said.  
  
Alt.-Gaz smiled and her face turned red again. "Hi, Zim!"  
  
Zim started. "Eh?"  
  
The other Irken stood up and crossed the room. Zim narrowed his eyes and regarded him in distaste. This Irken had reddish-pink eyes, like Zim himself, through of course Zim's eyes were  _far_  superior.  
  
"Who are they?" The other Irken asked Alt.-Gaz, looking curiously at Zim and GIR. He had a British accent, too.  
  
"An Irken I found," Alt.-Gaz replied, her gaze flicking to Zim and then back to the other Irken. "And his SIR Unit."  
  
The other Irken looked at Zim in surprise. "Oh, you're Irken? I would never have knowm, with the... hair. And the human eyes. That's a disguise, I take it?"  
  
Zim backed away from him. "I--have a skin condition," he said.  
  
"Oh, I-I'm sorry," the other Irken said. "I didn't realize. I shouldn't have said anything. My name's Zim, by the way." He held out his hand.  
  
" _I_  am Zim!" Zim snapped. He glared. No way would he shake the hand of this filthy  _imposter!_  
  
The other Zim lowered his hand and looked at Alt.-Gaz--she shrugged--and then looked at GIR. His eyes widened. "That SIR's warning light is on!"  
  
Alt.-Gaz hadn't taken her eyes away from the other Zim, and she suddenly seemed to remember what they were here for. "Oh, right! This Irken--he's sick!"  
  
"I see." Alternate-Zim's eyes were wide. He looked back over at the table, where the other three Irkens were watching them. "Bob, what do you think of this?"  
  
The smallest Irken at the table hopped out of his chair and trotted over to them. He took one look at Zim and whipped out an electronic device and stylus. "Sick, huh? Symptoms?"  
  
"Well, the warning light," Alternate-Zim said. He smiled at the real Zim in what he probably thought was a comforting way. Zim hated his guts. "This is Bob, our main doctor and one of the Circle, like me."  
  
"His veins are all gray in his wrists and palms," Alt.-Gaz said.  
  
"I'm not sick!" Zim protested. Maybe if he could convince them he could get away and get to his lab and why had he even agreed to come here in the first place and--he jumped, staring at the Irken that the Alternate had introduced him to. "HEY! I know you! We were in a ship! And you locked the controls! And almost crashed us into a  _star!_ "  
  
The little Irken just stared at him in utter confusion. "I am sorry... you must have mistaken me for someone else." He looked down at his notes. "...Which isn't surprising, given your current condition... if what I believe is true,  _is_  true." He stepped forward and beckoned to Zim. "Come with me. I need to scan you."  
  
"Fool! I'm not going anywhere!" Zim said. Why couldn't he keep himself from shaking? Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.  
  
Alternate-Bob ignored Zim and nodded to the others. Alt.-Gaz took Zim's arm and started pulling him forward. Alt.-Zim reached to take Zim's other arm but Alt.-Gaz waved him away, shaking her head.  
  
"Hey, let go!" Zim yanked his hand away from her and backed up.  
  
"TACKLE MASTER!" GIR yelled. He catapulted into Zim, grabbed his arm, and blasted out of the room with him with the rest of the group running after.  
  
"Don't wait for us, Skoodge, Tak!" Alt.-Zim called to the Irkens back at the table. "I want to see what's going on and I don't know how long it'll take!"  
  
"TAK?" Zim choked, craning his neck to see the table where the other Irkens had been sitting. He could see no more than green blobs. His amazing eyesight was going a bit blurry. "GIR! S-stop! SLOW DOWN!"  
  
"Right here!" Alt.-Bob yelled when they reached another door in the hallway. GIR slammed to the ground, his rocket feet sputtering out. Zim landed with a crack. He let out a long, low moan.  
  
"Are you all right?!" Alt.-Gaz cried as she came up.  
  
"The Examination Room is through here," Alt.-Bob said, helping Zim back to his feet. He looked at Alt.-Gaz. "And yes, he's fine. It takes more than a little fall like  _that_  to harm an Irken."  
  
Zim growled.  
  
Alt.-Bob ushered him into the Examination Room, told the other three to stay out, and closed the door. "You stand over there." He pushed Zim toward the corner and entered a few keys on a console in the center of the room. "Computer, scan this Irken. See if he has any sort of sickness."  
  
<Right away,> a feminine voice replied.  
  
"What is thi--HEY!" Zim said. Red lights like lasers had descended from the ceiling and ran over Zim. He pressed his back against the wall and looked upwards, breathing quickly. "WHAT--"  
  
<Done,> the computer said. <Results coming through.>  
  
The red lights vanished and Zim collapsed to the floor. He found he was panting. Alt.-Bob gazed at the console. His antennae twitched and he frowned.  
  
Zim had had enough of the room. He scrambled to his feet, ran across the floor, and darted through the door back out into the corridor. Alt.-Gaz peeked into the room.  
  
"What does it say?" she breathed, watching Alt.-Bob. The tiny Irken came back into the hall. He twitched an antennae again.  
  
"It says exactly what I  _thought_  it would say, of course." He looked at Zim. "You're not sick."  
  
Zim licked his lips in a futile effort to wetten them; his mouth was completely dry. "I knew it!" he said.  
  
"Don't get excited yet. You've been  _poisoned_. And this type of poison has only one known antidote."  
  
\--  
  
Gaz opened the door at the end of the hall and stepped inside. It was dark in here. And quiet. Very quiet. Except for... there was a slight hum, that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once so it was impossible to pinpoint.  
  
The only light in the room was a green glow somewhere in the back. Gaz headed toward it, doing her best to skirt by the piping and other obstacles that littered the room. Stepping lightly, she made her way over to the glow. And then she stopped. And stared. Because...  _Dib_  was there. It was some sort of machine, pushed against the wall, and he was suspended limply in the midst of green beams of light that slowly rotated around him. His eyes were tightly closed, and the back of his jacket hung down, nearly touching the floor. He wasn't conscious, that was for sure. Obviously. But he... he shouldn't be here.  
  
Gaz reached out her hand, which passed through the lasers without harm, and touched his wrist. He felt warm. And he was moving slightly, his stomach rising and falling. Gently. He was breathing.  
  
Gaz took a step back and looked at him. Her brother.  _Alive_. Here, after he had vanished in front of her eyes, supposedly wiped from existence... How had he ended up here? Was Alternate-Dib here too? Why was he stuck in this...  _machine?_  What was going on? Dib had let her believe he was  _dead_.  
  
"Wake up!" she shouted, reaching through the lasers and shoving him. Dib did nothing more than moan and shrug her off. He was still asleep.  
  
Sudden light spread across the floor from behind Gaz. Slowly, she turned. Two tall silhouettes stood in the doorway, though it was hard to tell through the clutter in the room.  
  
"I would get away from there, if I were you," one of the figures said. They stepped inside, the door closed; darkness fell again, and Gaz was trapped.


	9. Self-Destruction

"Who are  _you?_ " Gaz said. Through the darkness she could only see the dim outlines of the newcomers.  
  
One began, "We are--"  
  
The room brightened with glaring light and the speaker stopped mid-sentence. The two figures could be seen clearly now, and Gaz stared. They were the tallest Irkens she had ever seen. She hadn't really known that Irkens could get much taller than Tak. But these two were at least the same height as her dad. They both wore long white tunics, like the other Irkens Gaz had seen around the ship. As far as she could tell, they were almost completely identical except for the color of their eyes--one had red, the other had purple.  
  
The one with purple eyes glared at the one with red eyes. " _Why_  did you turn on the light? We are trying to be  _secretive!_ "  
  
"Talking to people in the dark makes me uncomfortable," the red one said with a shrug. They both had slightly British accents. Just like all the other aliens here.  
  
The purple one grimaced at his comrade's remark--he probably would have rolled his eyes if he had had pupils--and turned back to Gaz. "Who we are is none of your concern," he said, in a somewhat high-pitched voice. "Who are  _you?_ "  
  
Gaz crossed her arms.  
  
"Hm. I see. Fair enough," Alternate-Purple said. He and Alternate-Red navigated around the various pieces of machinery and computer consoles cluttering the room, until they stopped a couple of feet from Gaz. "We are going to have to ask you to leave."  
  
Gaz didn't move. "I want to know what's going on here." She nodded to her sleeping brother. "And what you're doing with  _him_."  
  
"We're not at liberty to say." The two Alt.-Tallests moved forward and Gaz backed away to the side. They stopped in front of the machine in which Dib was suspended, blocking Gaz's view of him.  
  
"So what are you, the leaders around here or something?" Gaz asked. Alternate-Tenn had said she was one of the leaders. Maybe she ruled with these guys.  
  
" _Leaders?_ " Alt.-Purple said with what sounded a lot like mock surprise. "Oh,  _no_ , that would be the Circle."  
  
"Yes, yes, the  _Circle!_  That would be Zim, Skoodge, Tenn, Tak, and Bob!" Alt.-Red said. Alt.-Purple's glare shot daggers at him.  
  
"There's an Irken here named  _Bob?_ " Gaz said, her arms still crossed.  
  
Alt.-Red frowned. "What's it to you?"  
  
Gaz decided to change the subject. She eyed her brother, still hovering listlessly in the machine. "I'm not leaving here without Dib."  
  
The Alt.-Tallest looked blank.  
  
" _Oh_ , you mean him?" Alt.-Red asked, gesturing to Dib.  
  
Some sort of smirk passed over Alt.-Purple's face. "I see. That is not in your best interests," he said to Gaz.  
  
"And why not?" Gaz said.  
  
Alt.-Red pointed to a monitoring screen on the side of the machine. "All the levels keeping track of him dropped almost completely earlier," he said. "We don't know what happened."  
  
"That means that the human should be dead. Being in that machine keeps him in stasis, asleep, whatever--it's the only thing keeping him alive." Alt.-Purple clasped his three-clawed hands together.  
  
"If he is taken out of it, he will die in a matter of minutes," Alt.-Red put in, leaning casually on the end of the machine.  
  
Gaz opened one eye and peered at them. Stirrings of anger rose from her core. " _Well_ , is there some sort of  _cure_  for that?"  
  
Alt.-Purple's face hardened. He took a step toward Gaz. She took a step back, though she didn't break her gaze away from his.  
  
"Well of course there  _is_  a cure," Alt.-Red said. "There  _is_  a substance that can cure  _anything,_  isn't there! But good luck getting it." He sneered.  
  
"That's quite enough of that," Alt.-Purple told him quietly. Menacingly.  
  
Gaz took a few steps back, glancing around surreptitiously for anything she could use as a weapon. Her hand closed on one of the metal pipes intertwining through the clutter in the room.  
  
"Tell me what the cure is, and get Dib out of there," she commanded.  
  
Alt.-Purple raised an antennae and Gaz guessed it was the equivalent of a human raising an eyebrow. His eyes narrowed. "You've seen too much," he said.  
  
"Say, did you tell anyone you would be here?" Alt.-Red asked. "Just... curious."  
  
Ugh. Lame.  
  
"This human stays with us," Alt.-Purple said. "He won't leave here alive, and neither will you."  
  
Gaz steeled herself and hunched her shoulders. Her death grip on the pipe had bleached her knuckles white. "I've been without my video game for  _two days_ ," she hissed. "At home, the kitchen's dirty and it's  _Dib's_  turn to clean it." Once more she raised her eyes, piercing the gaze of the Alt.-Tallest. "I've been travelling around with  _Zim_  and  _GIR_  and these people from  _your_  horrible dimension, I was captured by my brother's stupid opposite self, my brother DIED saving my LIFE, and now he's HERE, and I walked all the way here with Zim and GIR and  _my_  stupid opposite self, and Dib is the only reason I haven't already left this stupid dimension..."  
  
As she talked her voice grew in volume. Unconsciously she noticed that she had torn a section of the pipe away from the machinery sprouting from the floor, and now held it in her hand like a club. The Alt.-Tallests' bulging insectoid eyes were bulging even further.  
  
"...and you're telling me THAT YOU WON'T LET DIB GO AND YOU WON'T GIVE ME THE CURE?"  
  
"How did you--" Alt.-Red spluttered, staring at the pipe Gaz held.  
  
"Do what I say or I'll send you into a NIGHTMARE WORLD... even worse than  _this_  one!" Gaz brandished the pipe, which had broken off with incredibly sharp, jagged edges.  
  
"We don't take orders from  _you_ ," Alt.-Red snarled. Gaz narrowed her eyes at him and, at the edge of her vision, saw Alt.-Red slowly draw some sort of blaster from his pocket. Gaz ducked and rolled behind the nearest computer console. The blast missed her by a millimeter, shattering the machinery she had been standing next to and spraying shrapnel in the air.  
  
" _Missed!_ " Alt.-Purple cursed. He leveled the blaster at the console that served as Gaz's hiding place. "Come out, human, There's no one around to help you."  
  
 _I guess not_  all  _alternate dimension Irkens are 'peaceful,'_  Gaz thought.  
  
Another blast shredded the console, knocking her backwards. She gasped, out in the open for a second, before slithering behind another console. A third blast rocketed past her and nearly took off her leg.  
  
"We'll blow up everything in here if we have to!" Alt.-Red had taken out a blaster as well and joined in the shooting. Why couldn't anyone outside the room hear what was going on? They were only one level below the place where Gaz had met Alt.-Tenn...  
  
"No one comes down to  _our_  level," Alt.-Purple said, as if he had read Gaz's thoughts. "We're the  _lowest_  of the  _low_."  
  
"Yes, even though we're the tallest of the tall," Alt.-Red growled.  
  
Gaz had to keep moving. There wasn't much she could do against those dumb blaster things. If there was just something she could--Wait. Her eyes caught on a red button on the wall. The button didn't  _say_  "self destruct" on it, that would be stupid, stupider than having a self destruct button in the first place... but it was worth a shot. She ducked out of the way of yet another blast, and clenched her fists. She needed to get over there. And if Gaz needed something, she got it.  
  
She crouched, rolled, and vanished around the consoles and the ugly, bulky machinery in the room. The Alt.-Tallest darted their heads around like birds trying to keep up with her. Every once in awhile they fired off another shot. But really, they had no chance of hitting the girl that moved like a phantom.  
  
And then Gaz appeared at the wall, and her hand hovered over the button; the two Alternates pointed their guns at her before they realized what exactly she was doing, and they froze.  
  
"Well?" Gaz prompted. "Are you going to shoot? Or not."  
  
"Don't touch that button!" Alt.-Red cried, throwing his hand out with an unmistakable look of terror on his face. Gaz raised an eyebrow.  
  
Alt.-Purple lowered his weapon, looking sour. "Don't shoot. She'll press that button before anything hits her."  
  
"Why do we  _have_  a self destruct button in our room?" Alt.-Red hissed.  
  
"Tactical advantage," Alt.-Purple hissed back. He narrowed his eyes in undisguised dislike at Gaz. " _Human._  Press that button, and the entire ship blows up. That means we die, you die, and your friend here dies."  
  
Dib, right on cue, mumbled something about werewolves doing the Limbo and shifted a bit without waking up.  
  
Gaz blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. "He's not my friend. He's just my brother."  
  
"That word means nothing to us," Alt.-Purple said, waving it aside. "But I assure you, pressing that button will gain you nothing. We will  _all_  die. We will all  _lose_."  
  
Hmmm. Gaz hesitated, then lowered her hand. Out of immediate danger, the eyes of the Alt.-Tallest seemed to brighten. Their antennae lifted infinitesimally. Their grip on their weapons tightened.  
  
"So. What's this cure?" Gaz asked.  
  
Alt.-Purple regarded her coolly. "What makes you think--"  
  
"Well that's it right there!" Alt.-Red gasped. "Munepulleum!"  
  
Gaz's eyes immediately flew to where he was looking. Right in the midst of the wreckage of one of the consoles, there was a little vial with a few dregs of liquid in it. It looked... somewhat familiar.  
  
Before she could blink, Alt.-Purple ran over, crouched, and snatched it from the ground.  
  
"This fell from your  _pocket_. How did it come into your possession?!" he demanded.  
  
" _Give me that_ ," Gaz growled.  
  
Alt.-Purple's face twisted into something foul. " _You_. You are undeniably the most--"  
  
"GIVE."  
  
"--disrespectful, hideous, idiotic,--"  
  
"ME."  
  
"--INSANE human I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. I'm going to--"  
  
"MY."  
  
"--destroy this," he held up the vial, "and then destroy  _you._ " The vial sat in his palm. He was going to crush it in his fist.  
  
" _BROTHER!"_  Gaz's scream reverberated around the room. She punched the self destruct button, at which Alt.-Red emitted an ear-splitting shriek.  
  
<Thank you for pressing the self destruct button,> a female, computerized voice said. <You have ten minutes before the Massive collapses, leaving no survivors. Please make your way in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest exit. Have a nice day!> The computer began listing self-destruct procedures.   
  
Gaz gripped her pipe, and leapt at the two Alternates that stood in her way.  
  
\--  
  
" _Poisoned?_ " Zim repeated, attempting to make the word sound mocking or sneering or something, but his voice cracked. "That's... that's not... I AM  _ZIM._ "  
  
"He seems to be delusional, too," Alternate-Zim whispered. "Is his name really the same as--"  
  
"I'm not delusional! You're delusional!" Zim snapped.  
  
"There  _is_  an antidote," Alternate-Bob said to him. "The trouble is... we don't have it."  
  
"Well bring some to me!" Zim cried. He ran over to Alt.-Bob and shook him. "GIVE!"  
  
Alt.-Bob shrugged away from him. "I just said we don't have any! It was used up years ago. I'm... I'm sorry."  
  
"Master's  _sick?_ " GIR said. He ran over and grabbed the front of Zim's uniform, sinking to his knees and wailing, "WHY, ZIMMY, WHY??"  
  
"GIR!" Zim staggered backwards.  
  
Alt.-Bob grabbed Zim's shoulders and stood on tiptoe to look up at him. " _Look_ , Zim, if that is your real name, there's no other way to tell you this. Readings indicate what I had initially guessed--someone introduced a deadly toxin into your PAK somehow and it has coated the inside. There is  _nothing_  you can do... soon, your PAK will shut down completely."  
  
"My PAK--Zim--shut down?" Zim's squeedily-spooch seemed to shrivel. This was impossible, it was absurd, it... "GIR! Come!" Zim wrenched himself away and motioned for GIR to follow him. "We go back to the base! I'll find a cure  _there!_ "  
  
GIR sat on the ground, sniffling with big fat tears rolling from his teal eyes. When he didn't respond Zim grunted and grabbed the robot's good arm, dragging him away.  
  
Alt.-Bob shook his head slowly, eyes downcast.  
  
"How long does he have?" Alt.-Gaz breathed.  
  
The Irken medic twitched his antennae. "A few hours. Not long. He'll... be dead sometime around sunrise."  
  
Alt.-Gaz looked beseechingly at Zim's Alternate. "We  _have_  to go with him. Help him," she said.  
  
Alt.-Zim hesitated, then nodded. "Of course."  
  
Alt.-Gaz nodded back, and together they ran after Zim.  
  
"I'll just, eh, stay here, then," Alt.-Bob said lamely. No one answered. He sighed and headed back to the room they had come from, muttering to himself.  
  
\--  
  
Victorious.  
  
Gaz stood amidst a room full of piles of wreckage, scraps of metal, burn marks. Her pipe was bent. Her hair was out of place, falling around her head in strands. Her heart was thumping wildly.  
  
And, sprawled on the floor with considerable bumps on their heads, were the two Alt.-Tallest. They'd be out for awhile. Gaz had hit them pretty hard.  
  
There was no time for celebration. The self-destruct countdown was still going. It had been set for ten minutes... That seemed a bit long for a self destruct sequence, but Gaz wasn't complaining. She stepped over the bits of debris, clutching the vial she had wrestled from Alt.-Purple's grasp. She recognized it now. She had picked it up when she was with Zim in the Skool, looking for Dib.  
  
Gaz went up to the machine and looked it over. Dib still hung there, oblivious to all around him. There was no conveniently labelled "off" switch. Too bad. Gaz simply picked up one of the Alt.-Tallests' blasters, aimed it at one end of the machine, and BOOM! That took care of that problem.  
  
With one end of the machine blown to pieces the green lasers flickered. Then they disappeared. Dib fell to the ground with a thump. His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, taking a gasping breath like he had come up from a long submerge underwater. Then he groaned and clutched his head.  
  
"What the-- _Gaz?_ " he said, looking at her in shock. "Where... what's going..."  
  
"Here, genius. Drink that." Gaz shoved the vial at him. "Otherwise you might die. For  _real_."  
  
"What? But I..." Dib looked stricken. He examined the vial, sniffed its contents, and grimaced at Gaz. She opened her eyes and nodded to goad him on. He sighed, still looking utterly confused, and slowly drank it. A hacking cough wracked his body and he dropped the bottle. Then he saw the Alt.-Tallests lying on the ground and started. "Who are  _they?_ "  
  
Gaz watched him impassively. "Never mind. Let's go."  
  
"I... yeah, hold on a minute..." Dib pulled himself to his feet. "I don't understand... why am I... is that a countdown? Where are we? Man, I'm starving."  
  
"Come  _on!_ " Gaz grabbed his arm and led him out of the room, not caring about his struggle to keep up after his sudden wake-up from his comatose state. At the moment she didn't much care about anything except getting  _out_  of there. As she dragged Dib out of the room she heard the Alt.-Tallest stirring and quickened her pace.  
  
"Gaz, what's going  _on?_ " Dib demanded.  
  
<Six minutes until self destruct,> the computer voice announced.  
  
They reached the end of the hall and Gaz shoved Dib into the elevator. She got in herself and jabbed the button for level one, then stood silently, brooding.  
  
Dib looked around, tensing at the continued countdown. "Gaz--"  
  
" _Quiet._ "  
  
Dib fell silent and stared miserably at the floor. Gaz watched him with no expression on her face. She didn't understand how Dib had managed to be here, and apparently he didn't, either. There would be time to figure out what had happened later. In the meantime...  
  
The elevator doors opened on the first floor and Gaz strode out, still gripping Dib by his wrist. Irkens were everywhere, trying to get out of the ship, and the air was filled with the cacophony of hundreds of voices all speaking at once. Something hurtled out of nowhere and crashed into them, sending them both to the ground.  
  
"NYAH!" Dib moaned and pulled himself into a sitting position. His eyes widened when he saw who had careened into them. " _Zim?_ "  
  
Zim barely cast him a glance. He pulled himself back to his feet and pushed past Dib and Gaz and continued running, dragging GIR along with him.  
  
"Hi Dib! Hi Gazzy!" GIR chirped as they passed.  
  
"WAIT!" someone shouted. There were thundering footsteps behind them. Alt.-Zim and Alt.-Gaz ran up, panting.  
  
Gaz let out a breath through her nose. "So I guess  _Zim_  has an obnoxious opposite self now?"  
  
Dib stared wildly from Gaz to the two Alternates. "I remember you!" he exclaimed, looking at Alt.-Gaz. "Wait, are we still in that weird parallel dimension??"  
  
"We have to catch up with the other Zim!" Alt.-Gaz said. Alt.-Zim looked a little uncomfortable at the mention of his name.  
  
"He went where everyone else is going," Gaz said. That was, toward the end of the ship where the little group sans Dib had first come in. Gaz turned and went off in that direction. Dib chased after her, and the two Alternates followed.  
  
The elevator that Dib and Gaz had come up on opened, and out stepped the two Alt.-Tallest. They were clutching their heads.  
  
"There they are!" Alt.-Red roared, pointing at Gaz and Dib. Gaz wasn't sure how they had seen them through the crowd of panicked Irkens, but there was no time to think about that now.  
  
"You! Humans!" The Irken they had met earlier, Lit, made her way over to them, looking livid. "I  _told_  you not to cause any  _trouble!_ "  
  
"There's no time for that! C'MON!" Another Irken grabbed her arm and raced with her back into the crowd.  
  
Someone else bumped into Gaz and she looked around to see that it was Alternate-Tenn. The Irken leader glanced at her. And she shook her head.  
  
"Just as well it should be  _raining,_ " she muttered.  
  
"Gaz! Come on! We have to go!" Dib cried. Together they joined the crowd of Irkens. Gaz, not knowing exactly where to go from there, watched as Irkens converged at a certain point and vanished.  
  
"That way," she said, and pulled Dib with her. They emerged from the shack, onto a road flooded with Irkens, and ran a good distance away. Gaz turned to look--the ship, which had been invisible, flickered in and out of view.  
  
"Get down!" Dib yelled. He hit the ground and yanked Gaz down with him, letting go of her to cover his head.  
  
The ship disintegrated. There was a deep rumbling that seemed to come up from the Earth, and a tearing, grating sound. Dib actually lifted his head and turned to watch it. Gaz couldn't believe he'd be such an idiot... but she didn't bother trying to stop him.  
  
\--  
  
The ship--wherever they had been, Dib had no idea--was collapsing in on itself. It glowed, brighter and brighter, reflecting like firelight on Dib's glasses. It looked kinda cool, actually. Like something out of a sci-fi movie with good special effects. A circular wave of energy spread from the ship, shattering the windows of nearby buildings and cars and blasting dirt over everything in its path. And then the ship crumpled into dust.  
  
Shakily, Dib stood. "Gaz, what  _was_  that? How did I get--" He whipped around and stared in all directions. "Where's  _Zim?_ Wasn't he..." Dib clutched his head again. He had foggy memories of being in this alternate world, being captured, meeting his alternate self... What the  _heck_  had happened?!  
  
Gaz got back to her feet. She took in the blackened area where the Massive had been--the self destruct sequence hadn't even left any rubble.  
  
" _Finally_. Things are actually  _happening_ ," she said.  
\--  
  
A/N: Apparently, in canon Irken society, the Tallest must go through a ritual of cutting off their thumbs to prove they can rule the empire with only two fingers. Because Irken society is different in the alternate dimension and the Alternate-Tallest were never the leaders, they still have their thumbs. They also don't have those floating suits that the canon Tallest have. They have to walk like everyone else.


	10. An Alternate Solution

"The Massive!"

The plaintive cry carried through the throngs of Irkens that crowded the street, staring mournfully at the place where the great ship had once stood. They turned to each other, desperate for reassurance, for some idea of what they were going to do now.

"Who could have done that to the ship?" Alternate-Zim cried. His eyes were glazed over, his antennae pressed flat against his skull. Alternate-Gaz stood beside him, looking tense and worried. Zim walked ahead of them, shoulders hunched, one hand in his uniform pocket and the other dragging GIR along, doing his best to ignore both Alternates. They were all covered in dirt from the wave of energy sent out by the collapsing Massive. Every Irken Zim came across hurried away and gave him a wide berth. Well, good. He didn't like any of them, either.

Alt.-Gaz crept up to Zim's side. "Where are we going?" she asked, her voice hollow. "What did you mean when you said you have to get the cure at your base?"

"Irkens don't have bases," Alt.-Zim said, his voice equally as faint. "Look, maybe you should—"

Out of the corner of his eye Zim saw the Alternate reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder or something.

Zim lurched away, yelping, "DONOTTOUCHZIM."

"Okay, okay! Sorry." Alt.-Zim backed away.

Zim marched on, then stopped and jerked his head back and forth, unsure of where he was. He released GIR's arm and whirled around, jabbing his finger at Alt.-Gaz. "You! Which direction is the… shiny… portal-thing?"

"The what?" Alt.-Gaz asked.

"I know where it is!" GIR waved his hand in the air. "C'mon! This way! This way!" He spread his arms and ran off down the sidewalk, making airplane noises.

" _GIR_ ," Zim complained, his voice reaching a sharp pitch. He trudged after the little android, muttering under his breath.

"Zim!" Alt.-Gaz called. "Wait—we're coming with you. We want to help."

Zim didn't turn around. "Eh, don't need any help."

Despite this statement the footsteps behind him didn't cease. Those filthy Alternates were still following him. Irk.

"Oi!" someone shouted. Two extremely tall Irkens marched over to them. Upon seeing them, Alt.-Zim's face darkened. Zim turned at the familiar voice and stumbled backwards in shock.

"My Tallest!" he cried.

" _You!_ " Alt.-Red spat at Alt.-Gaz. "I knew we'd find you here. You dare—"

"Wait, that's not her!" Alt.-Purple realized. "The one we want was wearing a black dress. Oh!" His eyes fell on Alt.-Zim and he smiled. "Didn't see you there. Is this human with you, Zim?"

"My Tallest!" Zim ran up to Alt.-Red and tugged on the sleeve of his tunic. "My Tallest, I was trapped here by humans! Horrible HUMANS!"

"…Who are you?" Alt.-Red said blankly, pulling his arm away.

"We should keep going," Alt.-Purple said. "That girl could not have gotten far. We'll see you later, Zim!" He flipped his hand in a wave. He and Alt.-Red headed away, stalking through the flood of clueless Irkens.

"Those two," Alt.-Zim said, his voice shaking, "are a  _scourge_  on Irken society."

* * *

"Come on, Gaz, hurry!" Dib stumbled down the street. "We have to get to the portal… before Zim gets there… he'll trap us…"

Gaz trudged after him, her lips pursed. "You're  _freaking out_  about the portal again…"

Dib slowed, his boots clopping over the ground. "Well, yeah, I—come  _on_ , Gaz! You know as well as I do that Zim wouldn't hesitate to—"

"Zim's sick. I  _think_ he's a little too preoccupied to worry about trapping us here."

Dib skidded to a stop and turned in surprise. "Sick?"

Gaz shrugged.

"Sick! Well, that's interesting. What's wrong with—ugh." Dib's legs suddenly gave out and he sank to his knees. A pounding sensation in his head caused him to cringe and massage his temples, though the throbbing didn't stop. "Wha…"

Gaz grunted. "Looks like Zim's not the  _only_  one that's sick."

"Gaz, I feel kind of…" Dib looked at her blearily. "What… was in that  _stuff_  you gave me?"

Gaz pulled the little vial of silvery liquid out of her pocket and turned it in her hand, looking at it. "It's supposed to be some sort of cure for anything. There's no more left."

Dib took it and held it up to eye level. "Well whatever you had to give this to me for… maybe there wasn't enough of it!" He struggled back to his feet and wobbled a bit. "Where did you get this?"

"I found it at the Skool," Gaz replied.

"The Skool in this dimension? Was there any more?"

"Not that I saw."

"…Oh." Dib's heart sank. "Maybe… maybe we should go look for some. I don't think this stuff even exists in our dimension. I've never heard of it, and Dad's never mentioned it."

"I thought you wanted to get back to the portal before Zim did," Gaz said.

Dib was silent for a moment. Then he half-turned away from her. "What if I don't make it back to the portal?" He fought to control his involuntary shaking and took a deep breath, making up his mind. "You go back to the portal, Gaz. See if you can keep it open for me. I'm going to the Skool to look for more of this cure. If I don't come back, well…"

"You don't even know where the Skool  _is_ , you moron."

Dib looked at her reproachfully. "Do  _you_  know the way there from here?"

"Yeah. Come on." Gaz changed direction, clearly expecting Dib to follow her and also clearly not open to debate about this.

"Gaz, you might get stuck here, too!" Dib said. Gaz didn't respond. Dib followed her, biting his lip. But… despite his worry, he could not contain the warm glow that spread through his body.

His sister had not abandoned him.

* * *

"TALLEEEST!" Zim started to run after the two figures but Alt.-Gaz caught his arm, pulling him back.

"They're not going to help you, they're mean!" she said. Zim flinched away from her.

"Hey, your SIR Unit's gone!" Alt.-Zim said. Zim glanced around for any sign of GIR. The robot had vanished. Zim groaned. Did this mean he had to go look for GIR  _again?_

Something collided with his legs, knocking him off his feet and sending him crashing to the ground, and for a second he thought that GIR had barreled him over again. But, this wasn't GIR. A lithe shape crawled onto his stomach and peered at him with glowing red eyes, its pointed ears pricked.

"Hey! Geddoff!" Zim shoved the thing off him and scrambled back up.

"It's a cat!" Alt.-Gaz said in delight. She reached out her hand toward it but it whisked away, curling around Alt.-Zim's legs.

"Aw, hey," he said, and stroked it between the ears.

"KITTY!"

A silver blur rocketed out of nowhere, swooped by Alt.-Zim, and scooped the cat into his arms. Zim glared.  _There_  was GIR.

GIR's jets sputtered out and he shuddered to a landing on the sidewalk. The cat floundered out of his grasp, whipped around the group, and sped off—seemingly without touching the ground.

"Wait! Kitty!" GIR ran off after it.

"GIR!" Irk, not again! Zim took a few running steps after GIR, then his PAK legs slid out and he levered himself up on them.

They felt…  _different_. Different than they usually did. It was as if he was in a fog, they didn't respond to his commands instantly or as readily as they had in the past… perhaps it was because of the poison. That horrible poison. And because of GIR, he was now wasting valuable time. Time that he should be spending in his lab, figuring out what to do!

There was nothing that could be done about the PAK legs. He could only concentrate hard and make sure not to slip. He skittered over the ground after GIR. A similar sound echoed behind him and he turned to look. Alt.-Zim had picked up Alt.-Gaz and was following on his own PAK legs.

"Never be rid of them," Zim said aloud. He willed his PAK legs to move faster. One of the legs landed wrong and bent sharply, and he stumbled, but he quickly righted himself and kept moving.

At last Zim caught sight of GIR. His PAK legs lowered him down. He reached out, grabbed GIR by the little antenna on top of his head, and swung him upward.

Unfortunately his PAK legs didn't register his command to stop. They kept running, even when they brought Zim right up against a building. The first two spider legs climbed upward and Zim crashed into the wall face-first. He slid down into a heap on the ground, the PAK legs sprawled around him.

"WHOO! Let's do that again!" GIR said, still in Zim's grasp.

Zim moaned. The biomechanical legs retracted back into his PAK and he stood, bracing himself against the wall.

That irritating cat GIR had been chasing was sitting in front of him. Staring at him. Stupid cat.

" _What?_ " Zim snapped at it. The cat stood on its pointy little feet, tail lashing, and strutted through the door to the building… which was cracked open. GIR jumped up and followed, slipping into the building as well.

Alternates Zim and Gaz arrived just in time to see Zim get up and stomp after GIR, flinging the door open wider with a  _crack_ and disappearing inside.

* * *

Ugh. Zim remembered this place. It was like the Skool, back home. Well, not  _home_ , exactly, home was planet Irk. But this was like the Skool he was forced to attend in that horrible Earth town. He shuddered—terrible place. His footsteps echoed in the hallway and shivers ran down his spine at the sight of the dark, empty rooms.

GIR darted around a corner up ahead. Zim followed.

A shout came from somewhere up ahead, "Hey! What the—"

Zim broke into a run, swinging around the corner and coming to a halt in a large room, where he found himself eye-to-eye with a surprised-looking Dib.

Dib staggered backwards. Gaz was there too, frowning. And GIR was next to them, trying to reach out and pet the red-eyed cat.

Alt.-Zim and Alt.-Gaz ran into the room, panting. Alt.-Zim jumped when he saw Gaz. "Who are  _you?_ "

"Where did all of you come from?" Dib demanded.

"That does not concern you!" Zim growled. "We were brought here from the Massive by that  _cat._  What are  _you_ doing here, filth?"

"You were brought here by  _what?_ " Dib looked around, saw the cat, and stared at it in shock. "Wait, that's MiMi! Tak's SIR Unit! Right?"

"That's a stupid name for a robot," Gaz muttered.

"I think I had some sort of dream where I followed MiMi!" Dib said, backing away from the cat. "It led to a trap…"

"Hello," a voice said.

The group whirled around. A female Irken stood in the doorway, as if she had appeared out of nowhere. The cat sped to her and twirled around her ankles, then sat by her side.

Dib sucked in a breath. " _Tak_."

* * *

Dib had never seen Tak out of disguise before. Well, in person, at least. Her dark purple eyes glinted. Her antennae twitched. She was wearing a white tunic like all the other Irkens here. The sight of her stirred something in Dib's mind.

He could  _remember_  now. It had been a couple of nights ago… last night? He wasn't even sure. He had been working on a research paper, he'd heard some sort of sound out in the garage, he'd gone out to see what was going on… and he'd gotten a glimpse of…  _something_. Everything had gone black for a moment. And then he was standing on the sidewalk in this alternate dimension, completely lost.

But it had been Tak that he had seen. She had been in Dib's garage next to her ship; she had looked up. She must have shot him with something. Dib recoiled away from her, his heart pounding.

Tak shuffled into the room. She glanced around until her gaze fell on Zim, and she gave the tiniest of nods. MiMi flashed forward and twined around Zim; her holographic disguise fizzed away and she caught Zim by the scruff of his neck with one robotic claw.

"GAH! Unhand me!" Zim reached behind his head and scrabbled at the hand, but MiMi ignored him. She yanked him forward until he stumbled next to Tak and Zim's eyes widened. "Hey! It's you! I HATE YOU!"

"Tak, what are you  _doing?_  What's this all about?" Dib said uneasily. "Where did you even come from?"

Tak's eyes narrowed at him and her words came out in a hiss. " _Vengeance_." She turned to Zim and scowled, though her words were still directed at him. "Vengeance, Dib. This time, it  _is_  about revenge."

And then she, MiMi, and the captive Zim disappeared back through the door, and the door locked.


	11. Exigency

There was silence for a moment.

GIR was the first to move—he clopped over to the door and pounded on it with his little robot hand, crying, "MASTER! NOOO!"

Dib ran up to the door as well, nudging GIR out of the way, and grabbed the doorknob. He yanked it hard in both directions but the door didn't open. Turning, he scanned the room for any other means of escape. They were in some sort of classroom—filled with the usual things, desks, and whatnot. There was a window on the far wall. In the dark it was hard to tell, but Dib figured it was closed… Probably locked as well.

"Why would Tak lock us in here?" Alt.-Zim said faintly. He had his head buried in his arms, his antennae limp against his scalp. Alt.-Gaz was patting his hand. "She was part of the Circle… We all trusted her…"

"Tak must have somehow infiltrated this dimension," Dib said. "She could have  _anything_ planned!"

GIR, still at the door beside Dib, sank to his knees and wailed. Then he jumped up and ran to Alternate-Zim, grabbing the hem of the Irken's white tunic and falling to the floor. "MAAASTER!"

"There, there! It's okay!" Alternate-Gaz leaned down and gathered up GIR in a hug. "Zimmy'll be okay!"

Gaz, the real Gaz, had already been scowling. At her Alternate's display of affection, her frown darkened.

Dib made a mental note not to get on her bad side for awhile.

He darted to the window, though he still felt weak, and pressed his hands against it; pushing outward and then heaving upward. That didn't budge, either… Was there any way to unlock it? No, didn't look like it. Come on! That was a terrible design for a window!

"We're trapped here, then?" Alt.-Zim said. He still sounded upset, but calm. It was really weird to hear Zim's voice speaking in a  _calm_  tone.

Dib turned around, still with one hand on the window. "No… we're not trapped, we're just… temporarily stuck in here… with no way out. Wait, you have that same backpack-thing Zim's got, right?"

"A PAK? Yes, I suppose so." Alt.-Zim shrugged.

Alt.-Gaz let go of GIR and jumped up and down clapping her hands. "Ooh, yes! You can use it to break the window! The other Zim made spider leg thingies come out of his PAK when my brother's Guards were attacking you guys and he…"

"I'm not breaking anything. I don't believe in random destruction." Alt.-Zim shook his head.

"It's not random destruction!" Dib shouted, gesturing to the window. "We have to get out of here! Tak must be up to something! And I still need to find that cure!"

Alt.-Gaz's hands flew to her mouth. "Cure?! Have you been poisoned, too?"

Dib stared at her. "Poisoned?"

Alt.-Gaz scuffed her toe along the floor. "The other Zim's been poisoned. He's  _dying!_ "

He hadn't known that. That was… that was… Zim had been  _poisoned?_  By Tak?

Tak, a member of an advanced alien race, was attempting to kill someone with poison? That just seemed kind of dumb. Dib froze. Had she poisoned  _him?_  Was that why he needed the cure? He really was dying? He gulped… where could he get the cure now? Gaz had found a vial of it nearby, in the Skool… it must have something to do with Tak. Maybe she had more of it. It was his only chance…

Dib pushed at the window one last time, hurried back to the door, and tried the knob again. "Can any of you force a lock? Wait—wait, I think I actually have a lock-pick on me…" He fished around in his pocket, his tongue poking between his teeth.

"What are you talking about? Surely you don't  _want_  to go outside," someone said. Everyone turned in the direction of the voice. And stared.

The window that had refused to budge for Dib was now open and a woman stood right outside, looking in. Dib's back collided with the wall and unfortunately his teeth clamped down on his tongue.  _Nnf._

"Ms.  _Bitters?_ " he choked.

"Oh, pssh." The woman—Ms. Bitters, no,  _Alternate_ -Bitters—climbed through the window and landed lightly on the ground, then closed it again behind her. "The name 'Bitters' is so…  _bitter._  Call me Ms. Daisy-Sunshine!"

Dib blinked.

Ms. Daisy-Sunshine (OH, man,  _no_ , that was too weird, just too weird, Dib would keep calling her Alt.-Bitters) sidled over and placed her hands on Gaz's and Alt.-Zim's shoulders. Gaz stiffened… Dib wouldn't be surprised if she opened her eyes and fire blazed there.

"HI LADY!" GIR waved wildly at her, apparently having forgotten about Zim.

"Hello, cutie!" Alt.-Bitters said. Gaz shrugged away from her and backed into the wall. Alt.-Bitters didn't seem to notice. Instead she beamed and said, "A nice alien outside just asked me to keep an eye on you!"

"Alien…? Tak! That was  _Tak_  you met!" Dib realized, still weirded out by the alternate version of his teacher. "I've got to find out what she's doing!"

He tried to run to the window again but something grabbed his coat. Memories of being swung into the air filled his mind and he whirled around, yanking himself away, but it was just Alt.-Bitters. "What are you—"

"You can't go out there!" the Alternate said, her eyes wide and frightened.

"Why not?" Dib demanded.

"Why are you so desperate to go after Tak? Worried about Zim?" Gaz raised one eyebrow.

Dib waved her question away. "Not Zim, Tak might try to destroy the Earth again or something." The fact that Tak had gone after Zim didn't really surprise him. Zim had helped stop her scheme, after all. Dib supposed (or hoped, rather) that Tak didn't know the part he and Gaz had played in that.

"It's much too dangerous outside," Alt.-Bitters said. "You children stay in here, where it's safe. But here, I've got cream-filled cupcakes for you—baked with love!"

Alt.-Gaz smiled. "Hey, I like her!"

Alt.-Bitters went over to the teacher's desk at the front of the room and picked up a box. She handed a cupcake to each of them, though Alt.-Zim gasped when he touched his and dropped it.

Dib almost rejected his. He needed a  _cure_ , not a cupcake, there was no time for food, the fate of the  _world_  could be at stake with Tak on the loose! But he couldn't remember eating anything since he had had to do that research paper. The night Tak had done  _something_  to him and caused him to end up here with his life draining away. He decided to take small, cautious bites of the cupcake... It was gone all too soon.

* * *

"You ruined me."

Zim's legs ached and tingled like he was losing the feeling in them. Irk.

"Twice, Zim. Your  _hid_ eous  _fool_ ishness stripped me of my identity and cast me into a life I was never meant to live!"

Little flecks of spit flew into Zim's face as Tak spoke.  _Gross!_  Zim tried to scoot away from her but the claw of Tak's stupid SIR Unit held him fast by the collar, keeping him in an awkward kneeling position on the ground. Filthy ground. And Tak was awfully close to him. She was filthy, too.

Tak stepped away from him, her strange white tunic swishing around her legs, her hands clasped behind her back. "I never wanted revenge. Revenge is childish. But you… you ruined me  _twice_. The first time, you ruined my chances of being an Invader. The one job I was  _obviously_  meant to have! I am a far, far better Invader that you ever could have been. I could have been one of the greatest."

"Nonsense Tak,  _I_  am the greatest Invader the universe has ever seen!" Zim puffed out his chest in pride.

" _Shut up!_ " Tak snapped. She stopped, as if a little shocked by her outburst—as she should be, speaking to  _Zim_  in that manner—and continued on. "The second time, you somehow disabled my ship and my SIR Unit. I was left isolated. I could never return to Irk in that state, a failure, an Irken who escaped from her assignment. I can barely call myself  _Irken_ anymore!"

"Heheh, Tak, you're incompetent," Zim said. His eyes were rolling involuntarily. Strange. And hey, where was GIR? Hadn't he seen him just a second ago? Irk, stupid robot, must've wandered off agaiAAAUUGGGGHHH! His face was on fire!

He tried to focus and jerked in surprise when he realized Tak's face was almost an inch from his, her eyes narrowed in fury. She drew back. The glove on her right hand was ripped and her small, razor-sharp claws poked through. Zim rubbed at his face and felt the long scratches those claws had just left on his cheek. Ow…

" _You_  are the incompetent one, Zim!" Tak hissed. "Perhaps if you were an  _asset_  to the Empire, things would be different. Honestly I can't believe the Tallest have not jettisoned you into space yet."

Zim dropped his hand and laughed again. "They  _did_. Sent me to Earth. Gave me a mission. Haha,  _mission_.  _Secret_  mission."

"You're delusional as  _ever_ ," Tak said in a low growl. "I'm not going to bother trying to explain.  _Again_."

She went over to a big glass window and pressed her hands to it, looking out into… space? Heh? They were in space? This place… this place looked oddly familiar. Zim glanced around as much as he could with MiMi holding tight to his collar. His eyes widened. "HEY! We're in my space station!"

Tak looked back around at him, one antenna raised. "You realized that sooner than I thought you would… Interesting. Normally I wouldn't set foot in something  _you_  built but I didn't have much choice…"

"You can't be here, this place is mine! Computer! Eradicate the intruder!"

"You don't have an AI brain here," Tak said. "When we arrived I was going to disable it but it turned out that there was no need. You never installed one."

"I was  _going_  to," Zim muttered.

Tak came over to him. "It's almost sunrise," she said. "This is your last hour to live."

She reached out, snagged her claws under one of Zim's contact lenses, and peeled it away from his eye. It left behind a trail of viscous goop.  _Ew_ , that didn't usually happen.

"Get away from me!" Zim shouted, shuffling his legs on the floor but unable to move. Tak tossed his lens to the side and reached over to take the other one. Zim craned his head away from her but she took the lens, crumpling it in her fist. Then she pulled off his wig and threw that to the side, too. "Hey—HEY, give that back!"

"You won't need them anymore." Tak walked away with her back turned to him. Not a trace of emotion entered her voice. "I gave you a calculated dose of poison, when you were on the playground at that human Skool the other day… I set my holographic disguise to make me invisible and snuck up behind you, and poured it into your PAK. From then on… I knew exactly when you would die…"

"I knew it!" Zim said. His voice cracked. What was  _wrong_  with him? What was going on?

Tak whirled around. "No you didn't. You never saw me. I made sure that  _no one_  would see me… and live to tell about it." She clicked her claws together. "Dib spotting me while I was taking back my ship from his garage was an unforeseen circumstance. But I made the best of it. I never expected him to live… he did, but no matter, he and the others will not be able to escape the other dimension. It will be destroyed with the passing of the transit of Venus. Just like you." She didn't seem to really be talking to Zim anymore. As she spoke she turned and walked away, back to the domed window from which you could see Earth, a little blue marble floating in inky blackness. She pressed her hands against the glass again.

"You'll never take my amazing Zim-life,  _Tak!"_  Zim snarled. "I'll defeat you, easy. I've got my plan already worked out. The Tallest will LAMENT my victory over you and—eh, not lament, I meant, uh…"

Tak said nothing. Zim lapsed into silence and scowled, almost able to feel the poison inching its way further and further through his PAK.

* * *

"What  _exactly_  did Tak ask you to do? What was she doing? Where was she going?" Dib asked Alt.-Bitters. He had sat down to conserve his energy and everyone (except Gaz) had quickly followed suit, so they were now in a sort of lopsided circle. Desperation to get out of here caused Dib's feet to twitch annoyingly, but he needed information.

Alt.-Bitters tapped her chin. "Wellll… she had a little boy with her. I asked where she was going, she said 'REVENGE!' And then she asked me to make sure you five didn't leave this room. I guessed you were all playing a cute little game." She smiled at them all. "You children are so adorable!"

Gaz snorted, standing outside the circle with her arms crossed. "This isn't a  _game_ , this is like a piece of bad fan fiction."

"A game? People's  _lives_ are at stake!" Alt.-Gaz cried.

Alt.-Bitters looked crestfallen. "You mean it's not a game? Aw, dearies, I'm sorry. I… I still can't let you out of here. It's far too dangerous out there. There's disease, and Irkens, and thiefs, and fungus…" She counted off the many dangers on her fingers.

Dib cried, "BUT—"

"No." Alt.-Bitters shook her head.

Gaz stalked over, grabbed Alt.-Bitters' collar, and pulled her around to glare at her. "Let us out of here _now_ , or you will  _regret_  it for the  _rest_  of your  _life._ "

Dib flinched. Man, Gaz could be so  _hostile_  sometimes.

Alt.-Bitters cringed away from Gaz. "All right—all right! Don't hurt me." She stood, turning her head away, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose.

_I guess she really does care about us_ , Dib thought. This was… weird. But anyway! They were free to go now! And they had to hurry. They'd wasted enough time.

He went back to the window and slid it open, clambering out and jumping to the ground… but instead of the soft landing he anticipated, he hit the dirt with a jolt and skinned his hands.

_Agghhh…_ Whatever. He got back to his feet and turned to the window, brushing off his hands on his coat. "Gaz! C'mon!"

Gaz's face appeared at the window and squinted at him. "Yell at me again and it'll be the last thing you  _do_."

She climbed up and dropped to the ground next to Dib. And then his sister's face appeared at the window again. Dib started—But it was just Alt.-Gaz. She pulled herself out and landed on the ground a little less gracefully than Gaz had but didn't seem fazed. She just hopped back to her feet. Alt.-Zim came next with GIR clinging to his head, jumping down in a flash of white.

Alt.-Bitters came to the window, wringing her hands. "Children, you… you be careful, won't you? Look both ways before crossing the street? Don't catch anything deadly?"

Dib grunted. "We'll be fine!" He turned to Gaz. "Tak will have taken Zim to the portal, right? To get to the real world? We should head there."

Gaz nodded and she took the lead, since she had the flashlight and knew where the portal was. She led them at a good pace around the Skool and down the walk until Alt.-Zim stopped with a sort of high-pitched gasp, like the real Zim sometimes did. Dib looked back at him—Alt.-Zim's antennae were twitching and he placed his palms on the ground with his head tilted, as though listening or feeling for something. GIR tumbled off his head and sat down on the pavement.

"Something's not right," Alt.-Zim said slowly. "It's like… like the whole world is crumbling, or something!"

"You can feel that?" Gaz said, one eyebrow raised. Alt.-Zim sat back on his knees and shrugged.

Dib considered this. Crumbling? Tak! Tak had to be behind it! "We've gotta  _hurry!_ " Dib cried. He took the flashlight from Gaz—if that had been her Game Slave, he would most likely no longer be breathing now but in this case she allowed it—and hurried them on. Hopefully he could find the way to the portal in the dark. He'd made it before, right? When he'd found out that he couldn't get through… and then from that point the night had just spiraled into a series of getting captured and waking up in that alien spaceship… man, this just hadn't been a good day.

And then there the portal was. Glowing on the door of what should have been Zim's house. Upon seeing it, Alt.-Zim skidded to a stop. "This is Skoodge's house!" he exclaimed. "Well, it… was."

"Irkens used to live in houses in the town before mean people came and tore them down," Alt.-Gaz explained. "So they had to move into the Massive, and they cloaked it to hide it from view."

"That's saaaaddd…" GIR said.

Dib paused, looking at the portal. What if it didn't let him through again?

Gaz cast a glance at him, then headed toward it and disappeared into it. GIR was tugging at Alt.-Gaz's dress and asking her to play piggy with him. Dib sighed. The little robot should probably come too. Of course he was an evil machine that belonged to Zim, and should probably be left behind… but... this world may very well end up being destroyed, and GIR didn't seem like he would come through the portal on his own, and… Nnngh. Dib wondered for a moment how to pick the little robot up, then just grabbed him by the head.

"NO!" GIR screamed. "WANNA STAY HERE! HEEEEERE!"

"You'll be  _destroyed_  here," Dib said. Idiot robot. Why couldn't he realize that—

"Uh huh, LEEET GOOO!" GIR struggled to get away but Dib threw him into the portal and he, along with his screams, vanished. Dib turned to the two Alternates and hesitated.

"Are you…coming?" he asked.

The two didn't look at each other, but Alt.-Zim slipped his hand into Alt.-Gaz's. "We're staying here," he said.

Alt.-Gaz nodded. She didn't say anything.

Dib was the only one left, then. He put his hand into the portal, expecting his fingers to brush against the same invisible barrier he had encountered last time, but nothing happened. His heart leaped. He took another step, and the world disappeared around him, and…

…And he came out, in Zim's lab, in the  _real world_ …! And… and to the awful racket of some sort of siren that started beating on his eardrums as soon as he entered the room.

<Intruder alert. Intruder alert,> a computer voice was saying, over and over again in a monotone. Gaz was trying to talk to it, yelling up at the ceiling. She was waving her arms and everything.

"Gaz! I made it!" Dib said.

"This thing won't  _shut up_ ," Gaz growled.

<Well you could try asking  _nicely_ ,> the computer said. <I'm only executing my programming. It's very tedious and I don't enjoy it much. Intruder alert. Intruder alert.>

Gaz dropped her arms and opened her eyes, though they were narrowed. " _Please_  stop, then."

The alarm ended with one last echoing shriek. <Was  _that_ so hard? I don't get enough appreciation around here. Honestly.>

"Hi 'gain!" GIR said, waving at the ceiling.

The computer made some noise that sounded like a disgusted sigh. <Oh. Hello.>

Dib glanced around. There was no one else here but him, Gaz, and GIR. But surely Tak would have taken Zim here! Just… where were they? "Gaz, did you see Zim and Tak?" Dib said, coming over to her.

"No," she replied. She was squinting again.

<Zim and Tak? Oh, they came through here awhile before you did,> the computer said.

"They did?" Dib stared upward. "Where'd they go?"

<The teleporters. I thought Zim broke those but apparently not… Yeah, Tak dragged him right over there and went through one of them. Didn't bother talking to me, either.>

"And you didn't… stop them?" Gaz said.

<Nah, Zim didn't  _ask_  for my help. He can handle himself just fine. And if he doesn't come back, well, I get his stuff.>

"What would you do with his stuff? You're a computer!" Dib said. "No, you've got me sidetracked." He looked over at the teleporters that stood against one wall of the base. Yeah, he remembered those. Zim had brought him through them once, that time Dib broke into his base and got captured. Now it sounded like the same thing had happened to Zim. Not that it mattered. Dib just needed to stop whatever Tak was planning.

* * *

Tak glanced out the domed window again. She took in a long breath. And she went over to the wall, and pressed a button to turn the window into a viewscreen.

The window went staticky and fizzed out to show Tallests Red and Purple on the Massive.

"—kind of thought you wouldn't be around anymore, Zim," Tallest Purple was saying. "How did you get—" He stopped. He and Tallest Red stared at Tak. "Hey! You're not Zim!"

"My Tallest!" Zim struggled against MiMi's grip again but still she wouldn't let go. "My Tallest! Sirs! I've been poisoned! And KIDNAPPED!  _KIDNAPPED!_ "

"Tak reporting in, my Tallest," Tak said to the viewscreen, and saluted.

Tallest Red laughed a little. "Ohh, we got this signal and thought it was  _Zim_  calling us."

Purple laughed too. "Which was kind of weird, since we've been getting messages talking about killing hi—"

"YES, well, what is your message?" Red cut in.

Tak stood up a bit straighter. "My Tallest, I know you must be angry with me. But I have a plan that will redeem any of my previous failures."

Red and Purple glanced at each other, their antennae twitching, like they were thinking, What's she talking about? Who  _is_ this person?

Zim smirked. Tak wouldn't understand the looks they were giving each other. She didn't understand the Almighty Tallest like he did.  _No one_ understood the Tallest like he did.

" _I_ have been the one sending you messages, My Tallest," Tak went on. "I told you that with this plan, Zim would be dead by my hands and this scourge on the Empire would be gone forever."

Tallest Purple scratched his head. "Uh  _huh_ … What did you say your name was, again?"

Tak's antennae flattened against her scalp and then perked up again. "Tak, Sir."

"And your title?" Red prompted.

"I don't have one."

Red and Purple looked at each other again. While they were all distracted Zim extended his PAK legs to try to lever himself away from MiMi but they skittered on the metal floor, out of control. He couldn't even retract them back into his PAK.  _Irk!_

"Well, what's your PAK encoding?" Purple said. None of them seemed to notice Zim's escape attempt.

"My PAK encoding no longer applies to me," Tak said. Her voice faltered. Just a little.

Red narrowed his eyes. "Oh  _really_. That is a  _very_ thin line you walk, Drone."

_Drone!_  The Almighty Tallest had called Tak a Drone—Which meant Zim outranked her now! He had outranked her before, of course, just by his sheer amazingness alone, but now it was official! The Tallest had to listen to him now!

"MY TALLEST!" Zim called. "My—My Tallest! You have to—"

"Yeah, hang on, Zim," Tallest Purple said, flicking his fingers as if waving away a fly.

" _Explain_  yourself," Red said, looking down at Tak.

"My Tallest, I have set up a way to _ensure_  that the universe falls to us!"

The Tallest didn't look impressed. "Our victory is already ensured," Red said. "We're  _Irkens_."

Tallest Purple bobbed his head up and down in agreement.

"…Allow me to explain," Tak said.

"Whoa whoa whoa waaaaiiiit," Tallest Purple said, holding his hands up in a "stop" gesture. "You said  _you_ were the anonymous source? The one who was supposed to kill Zim? Well why'd you tell us to lure Zim out of his house last night, huh? He doesn't look dead to me!"

Red shoved his co-ruler out of the frame, hissing, "That's  _enough_."

What were they even talking about? Zim grabbed one of his spider legs and attempted to put it back in his PAK manually, but it wrenched itself from his grasp. The stupid things seemed to have developed minds of their own.

"Zim was building a portal," Tak said, casting a backwards glance at him. "I needed that for what I had planned, and I needed him out of the house."

"There is  _severe_  punishment for keeping secrets from your leaders!" Red growled. "You didn't tell us what we were luring him away for. We had to make up some stupid story about the Resisty. You didn't say anything about a portal. You didn't even say who you were!"

Tallest Purple peered back into the frame. "But you said you didn't care who our anonymous source was, as long as they listened to us and got rid of—"

Tallest Red pushed him away again.

Tak took a breath, and stood up straight. Clearly she had no intention of being interrupted again. " _My Tallest_ , I sent out a signal to change Zim's portal. I  _created_ an alternate dimension! An exact copy of this universe!"

" _WHAT?"_  Zim said, jerking his head up. " _You_ broke my portal? You made it 'splode, DIDN'T YOU!"

"You created an alternate dimension? Impossible," Tallest Red scoffed.

Tak trudged on. "Yes, a universe that's a copy of this one! Only it ended up skewed—everyone's personalities changed. The universe was based around the mind, my Tallest. It warped the minds of everyone's Alternate. And the universe was very unstable. It needed a live, dormant mind to sort of balance it out, keep it from crumbling.

"I planned on using myself, but when I went to get my ship… I needed parts from it to link the dormant mind with the dimension… I captured a nearby human and used him instead. Then his monitoring levels dropped almost completely and we thought he would die, thereby destroying the alternate dimension. So I  _did_  end up using myself as the needed mind."

Tallest Purple, back onscreen, gawked at Tak with confusion written all over his face.

Tallest Red had his eyes narrowed in boredom and was resting his head on his two-fingered hand. "I have no idea what you're talking about… and that doesn't make any sense. You're right  _here_."

Tak smirked at that. "Not true, my Tallest. This isn't me… not really." While the Tallest stared at her, she turned and gave a nod to MiMi.

The SIR Unit flung Zim to the side where he crashed into the wall on top of his PAK legs… not the most comfortable landing. Then she sped off. Zim struggled to his feet but his legs gave out under him and he slid back down the wall.

A couple minutes passed. Then MiMi appeared again, and next to her stood… Tak. Tak, in her regular purple uniform.

She strutted into the room to stand next to the Tak that had been speaking with the Tallest and gestured to her. "That is my Alternate," she said.

The Tallest stared.

Tak went on, "When I sent out the signal to Zim's portal, I programmed my Alternate not to have a warped mind like the others… but to be controlled by me."

"We are exactly the same," the first Tak said. "And, my Tallest, there is now no longer a mind keeping the other dimension stable."

"It will collapse at sunrise, at the end of the transit," the second, and real, Tak said. "And with something from it out here in the real world—my Alternate—it'll be even more unstable. The collapse will send out a powerful wave that will completely wipe the minds of any creature not wearing a PAK."

"That is, every creature in the universe except for the Irkens." The first Tak (Alternate-Tak?) took on a smug look. So did the second Tak.

_Tak clones_. Did everyone have a clone now? This was stupid! Zim tried to get up again. This time he was on his feet for an even shorter amount of time before he sank to his knees.

"And the poison I gave Zim will kill him at the same time as the alternate dimension collapses," Tak said. "I lured his SIR Unit into the other dimension so that the poison wouldn't be detected and revealed by the warning light. I didn't expect Zim to follow… and then I lost track of him."

"HAH!" Zim said. His voice was sort of a gurgle. Ew.

Tallest Purple closed one eye and peered down at Tak. "Aren't you the one that tried to be an Invader and fill the Earth with snacks?"

Tak brightened. "Yes."

"That plan was overcomplicated too," Tallest Red said. "Your plans are overcomplicated. Although I do like the idea of filling a planet with snacks. Just… come up with something simpler!"

Tak clenched her fists. "Yes, my Tallest. I just—"

"AHA!" someone shouted. The two Taks whirled around and Zim looked up from where he was curled up beside the wall, pretty much lacking the ability to move. Dib had emerged from somewhere, with his horrible little sister, and GIR! GIR was there, too! Maybe now they could, eh, escape… somehow.

"You!" Both Taks shouted.

"Who are they?" Red, his eyes focused on the little group, asked. Purple shrugged.

"I knew you were up to something, Tak," Dib said. "I'm here to stop it. And to get a cure for whatever's wrong with me—I know you have it!"

Zim closed his eyes. He didn't want to bother watching what was going on.

In all honesty, he really didn't care.


	12. A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Erase

Dib stopped in his tracks. He, Gaz, and GIR had emerged into Zim's space station from the teleporters and hurried down a long corridor to arrive at the entrance to this room. Now he stared around at the scene in front of him—at Zim's red and purple leaders projected on a large viewscreen, Zim crumpled up unmoving in a corner, and MiMi, no longer concealed under her hologram, standing near the  _two_  Taks that were glaring at Dib.

There were two Taks… mirror images of each other, except that one was dressed in the white tunic worn by the Irkens in the alternate dimension and the other was wearing the purple uniform that Dib remembered from the first time they had met.

" _You_ ," the Tak in purple snapped. "I  _knew_  I should never have gotten you involved!"

"You kidnapped me!" Dib said, recovering his bearings.

"Because you were in my  _way!_ " Tak shouted.

"Ooh, twinsies!" GIR said, beaming at the two Taks. Dib regarded the one wearing white—she had been the one to drag Zim away and lock them in the classroom in the other dimension.

"Are you… actually  _from_ the other dimension?" he asked.

She, Alternate-Tak, smirked. "Of course."

Dib groaned. This was too confusing.

The Tak in purple snapped her fingers (Dib wasn't entirely sure how she did that, since she only had two fingers and on top of that she was wearing gloves) and MiMi stood at attention.

"MiMi, detain them!" Tak commanded. MiMi flashed over to the little group. Dib scrambled backwards, remembering all too well the feeling of her cold metal claws clamped around his neck the first time he had met Tak.

MiMi's claw lashed out and snatched the collar of Dib's trench coat. She grabbed GIR, too, and dragged them both over to the viewscreen, where Tak was still standing. Alt.-Tak popped up on the metal spider legs that sprouted from her PAK, scuttled over to Gaz, and dropped to the ground. She grabbed Gaz's arm and pulled her over to join the others. Gaz scowled—already, as Dib knew, looking for a chance to get away from here. The real Tak took a few steps closer to the prisoners.

"I don't know what you thought you could achieve by coming here," she said. "If you came to rescue Zim—I don't know  _why_ you would since you seem to hate him more than  _I_ do—you're too late. He'll be dead in a matter of minutes. And this universe will fall to Irken rule. The transit of Venus is nearly over."

"The transit of Venus?" Dib echoed without comprehension, struggling against MiMi's hold on his collar.

Tak took on some sort of smug, triumphant look, as if she was thinking, "Aha! More people to share my evil plan with!"

…Kind of like the look Zim always got.

"Yes. It's a planetary alignment," she said. "Well… I don't know if it is technically considered a  _planetary_  alignment, but you get the idea." She went over to the viewscreen and pressed a button. The box with the two Irken leaders shrank into the corner—still there, but smaller so that empty black outer space could be seen. Oh! Oh, it wasn't a viewscreen, it was a window with essentially a video chat-thing open on it. Okay. Weird.

"Hey, what'd you do with the camera?" the purple leader on the screen asked. "All we can see now are your antennas!"

Tak pointed to a bright star outside the window. "There is your sun," she said to Dib. "During the transit, the second planet in your solar system, Venus, passes between it and the Earth." She ran her finger in a line over the sun to illustrate her point. "It is reminiscent of a solar eclipse. I assume you've heard of  _that?_ "

Dib nodded.

Tak stepped away from the window. "This happening is rare… and powerful. With its power I was able to create the alternate dimension. When the transit ends the other dimension will be destroyed. And, with the instability caused by having my Alternate in the real world, it will send out a wave that will wipe the minds of every non-Irken in the universe—making conquest that much easier. Questions?"

No one made a sound.

"A transit like this exists in Irk's system," Tak added. "But that one is even more rare. Even  _more_  powerful."

"How do you even know all this?" Dib demanded. "You're not even from this solar system!"

Tak shrugged her bony, insect-like shoulders. "Google is painfully easy to use, Dib. Learning about the transit of Venus was not difficult." She pressed the button again, and the window once again filled with the images of the two Irken leaders. As far as Dib could tell, they looked bored out of their skulls.

Tak started talking to the Tallest again but Dib peered over at the corner where Zim still lay in a heap. The alien hadn't moved since the group had come in. Maybe he was already dead… but he hadn't  _looked_  fatally ill the last time Dib had seen him, and they could  _really_  use an ally (as much of an ally as Zim could be, anyway).

He glanced at Gaz, standing next to him.  _What are we going to do?_  He directed the thought at her but he knew she couldn't understand. Even after years of study, Dib had been unable to crack the secret of telepathy.

But Gaz seemed to sense his look. She opened one eye and stared straight at him, still frowning. She blinked.

Dib looked up—Tak's back was turned.

Gaz let out a loud grunt and twisted away from Alt.-Tak, stomping down on the Alternate's foot.

"Hey!" Alt.-Tak clutched her foot and winced. MiMi released Dib and lunged at Gaz instead. However, Gaz simply stood on one foot and slammed the other into MiMi's chest. MiMi tumbled backwards, letting go of GIR.

"I am  _sick_ of all the stupid aliens today!" Gaz shouted, eyes open and angry. Dib stayed a good distance away from her. Alternate-Tak darted over again and MiMi struggled to her feet, the panel on top of her head sliding open and an array of laser guns protruding out. Before the robot could use them Gaz grabbed MiMi by the back of the head and yanked her around to face Alt.-Tak. The Alternate skidded to a halt at the sight of the guns directed at her.

Tak watched the proceedings open-mouthed; then her stunned look faded into one of irritability.

"Excuse me, my Tallest, I have a slight matter to take care of," she apologized to her leaders.

"Oh, sure, it's not like we have anything  _important_  to be doing right now," Tallest Red said onscreen. A few other Irkens had appeared next to the leaders and were watching what was going on.

Tak ignored Dib completely and ran to confront the bigger problem—Gaz keeping Alt.-Tak at bay with MiMi. She couldn't keep that up forever!

Dib took hold of GIR by the shoulders and shook him. "Come on! We need help! You can turn red and attack people, right? C'MON!"

The little robot struggled to pull away from him. "Why you shaking me? I wanna play wif da twinsies!"

Dib dragged him over to where Zim lay on the floor. The alien's stomach was rising and falling slightly. Wait, was it even considered his stomach? Abdomen might be a better term—ugh, this wasn't the time for that. Anyway, Zim was breathing, he was still alive. Zim never gave up  _this_  easily. Maybe he was actually tied up and that was why he was just, like, lying there.

"Hey, Zim! Wake up! We need help!" Dib said.

There was a muffled "Mm" that sounded like it may have come from Zim.

" _Zim_ , c'mon!" Dib knelt and picked up one of Zim's wrists. The hand hung limp. "What the heck? You're not even bound! What kind of idiot pathetic alien  _are_  you?"

Zim's glittering red eyes opened to glaring slits. "Go 'way. I'm resting."

Reaching down, Dib grabbed the weird pink triangle sleeve-things on Zim's uniform and hauled him to his feet. As soon as he let go Zim sank back onto his knees.

"What's wrong with you?!" Dib demanded.

"I've been  _poisoned_ , Sib!" Zim snapped.

" _Dib_."

"I 'unno where the cure is. Maybe GIR'll get it for me… prolly not, he's dumb…"

"Look, I need a cure, too!" Dib said. "I could be dying! Who knows! But you don't see  _me_ lying on the floor."

"Zim is fragile."

Dib wrinkled his nose. "I thought you were ' _indestructible_.'"

"Oh yeah… inestruckable. Mm." Zim closed his eyes again.

Dib groaned. " _Fine_. Could you at  _least_  get your robot to help us?"

Zim's antenna twitched; he blinked open his eyes, swiveled his vision to GIR, and, to Dib's surprise, pointed a shaking finger at Tak. "GIR, Tak is threat to mission. Go destroy."

GIR saluted and his eyes flooded blood-red. He ran over and crashed into Tak, who had been working with her Alternate to attempt (unsuccessfully) to get MiMi away from Gaz without ending up in the line of fire. They both hit the ground hard and GIR crouched on top of her.

"YOU WILL LEAVE MY MASTER ALONE!" GIR shouted in the weird mechanical voice he used in his attack mode.

"Zim, get him off of me!" Tak shrieked. Zim, having curled up again and closed his eyes once more, didn't respond. Clearly he had no intention of being any help to anyone. Dib gave up and hurried to help Gaz.

Gaz was having difficulty keeping control of MiMi. The android had retracted the laser guns again and now clawed at Gaz's hands, but Gaz didn't let go. Alt.-Tak hovered nearby (not literally; as far as Dib knew, Irkens couldn't fly), darting back and forth, obviously hesitant about attacking Gaz as long as she had MiMi under her power.

Dib had just reached them when Alt.-Tak grew frustrated enough to fire a laser. Gaz dodged, but the laser hit MiMi's claw and blasted it off.

"Stop! Stop it!" Tak cried. Dib whirled around. Tak struggled away from GIR, staring in horror at Gaz. "You're hurting—you're damaging her! That's an expensive piece of Irken equipment and—"

Dib was stunned. Tak  _really_  cared about MiMi?

GIR lunged at Tak again as she climbed to her feet. Tak fished in her pocket, drew out a little vial, and tossed it to her Alternate before she was knocked over again. Alt.-Tak deftly caught it and held it up. "Release MiMi or I'll destroy your Munepullium!"

Dib's stomach clenched. Munepullium? Hadn't Gaz mentioned that? Wasn't that the  _cure?_  Tak  _did_  have it!

Tak groaned. "I've told you," she said to her Alternate, "it's called didonai-vivere. You don't  _listen_."

Alt.-Tak didn't wait for Gaz to let MiMi go. She drew back her arm and flung the vial across the room. It spun through the air before shattering on the opposite wall.

"No! WAIT!" Dib cried. His feet unconsciously took him a few steps forward—they obviously didn't believe his eyes, which widened at the sight of his last hope now dripping down the wall.

There were metallic rattling noises from behind them. Zim was crawling forward, his PAK legs reaching out and pulling him along the ground like an injured spider. He reached the wall which was now spattered with silver liquid and strained to reach up as high as he could, actually sticking out his tongue and  _licking_  the stuff off the wall.  _Ugh_. Dib grimaced… and his heart plummeted even farther. That was the last of the cure. He wouldn't be revived. Zim might, but Dib wouldn't.

* * *

Gaz's momentary distraction caused by the Munepullium debacle was enough to allow MiMi to slip away. The robot slammed her claw into Gaz, flinging her into the wall. Gaz gasped and crouched on the floor. Seeing that MiMi was free, Alt.-Tak abandoned them in favor of assisting the real Tak with dealing with GIR.

MiMi was coming again. Gaz ground her teeth and clenched her fists. She got to her feet and plunged her hand into her pocket, pulling out her Game Slave. Swinging it in an arc, she collided the edge with MiMi's neck. It severed. And the robot's head toppled to the ground, the red eyes fading to a dull gray. Gaz exhaled.

Her game system always  _had_  seemed to have a strangely sharp edge.

Now she might have a chance to think. Something Tak had said nagged at Gaz. Didonai-vivere, another name for Munepullium. Didonai-vivere… where had she heard that before?

She froze. Professor Membrane had mentioned it to her when he had given her the tracking device. The tracking device was powered by it!

Gaz pulled it out and flipped it over, jamming her fingernails under a little panel on the back and prying it open. She reached in and dug out the wires that Alternate-Tenn had fixed for her back in the other dimension. Underneath, there were two tiny tubes filled with what looked like the silver liquid that had been in the vial. Gaz pulled them out and tossed the shell of the tracking device to the side.

" _Dib_ ," she said. Dib had gone over to inspect the shattered remains of the bottle. He looked up at her and his eyes widened—he probably thought she was in trouble or something, when would he ever  _learn_ —and he ran over to her. He looked taken aback by MiMi's disembodied head.

"Gaz, where's wrong?" he panted.

Gaz showed him the tubes of didonai-vivere. "Dad gave us the cure."

Dib stared in disbelief. Then he reached out his hand and Gaz placed them in his palm. "You… you had these all along?"

Gaz shrugged. "They were in the tracking device."

Dib held one of the tubes to his mouth and downed it in one gulp. He shuddered. "This stuff doesn't  _taste_ like a cure."

"HAH! You  _failed_ , TAK!" Zim suddenly shouted. He was on his feet, although he looked like he was having trouble keeping his balance. His metal spider legs were splayed out on the ground behind him. "I'm," he coughed, his antenna twitching, "…still alive."

"Aw, that was the only part of your plan we actually cared about!" Tallest Purple protested onscreen. The two Taks had finally managed to catch GIR and held him, struggling, between them.

"You idiot!" Tak shouted at her Alternate, shoving GIR at her. "Why did you throw the antidote?!"

"You don't know how to deal with prisoners!" Alt.-Tak hissed. "Have you developed a liking for them?"

" _What?_ " Tak snarled.

Alt.-Tak clasped GIR more firmly to be sure he didn't escape. "It doesn't matter anyway! The plan is starting."

* * *

She was right. The world was shaking. Literally  _shaking_. Now that Dib thought about it, it had been shuddering for quite some time now but no one had noticed. Fear pierced his chest. If they didn't stop this…

At that moment Gaz winced and clutched at her head. She squinted at Dib. "Ugh… where are we?"

"Gaz!" Dib cried in alarm. "It's starting!" Gaz's mind was in danger!  _His_ mind was in danger! If they could get Alt.-Tak back through the portal, maybe this all would stop. They had to get her back there,  _now_.

"Zim! We have to get Alternate-Tak!" he shouted. Zim, shaking, glanced from Tak to Alt.-Tak, probably trying to figure out which was which. He must have been suffering after-effects of the poison. "The one wearing white!"

Zim levered himself up on his spider legs and lunged for the Tak wearing the white tunic. She dodged, letting go of GIR in the process. Zim grabbed Alt.-Tak's arm, lost his balance, and toppled over, his spider legs folding in and then retracting back into his PAK.

"GET OFF OF ME!" Alt.-Tak spat. Tak ran to help her Alternate but Gaz pulled out the last thing in her pocket, her flashlight, and flung it at the alien's head. Tak dropped with barely a sound.

"GIR! Capture mode!" Zim shouted as Alt.-Tak pushed him away from her. GIR saluted, his eyes flashed, and he ran back to them. He pulled Alt.-Tak's arms behind her back and hoisted her upright.

"Tell your robot to come with me and bring Alt.-Tak," Dib said to Zim. "You stay here and watch Gaz!"

Zim stiffened. "I don't take orders from—"

"Stay here and watch my sister!"

"FINE!" Zim snapped. "Go off with the Tak clone and leave me in  _peace_." He narrowed his eyes and looked at GIR. "GIR, go with him."

GIR saluted again. Heart pounding, Dib nodded and ran down the corridor toward where he remembered the teleporters to be. They had to get through them and put Alt.-Tak back through the portal. His own head was starting to hurt, and he could almost feel his memories ebbing away.

"Let me  _go!_ " Alt.-Tak screeched. Dib glanced backward. The Alternate was struggling and kicking against GIR, who didn't even seem to notice. Dib shuddered. GIR was almost scarily strong sometimes.

There! He could see the teleporters ahead. He broke out in a sprint, hearing the clop of GIR's feet grow louder as he followed suit. "Through here!" he said.

"Obtrusion detected!" GIR warned, skidding to a halt. There was a skittering sound and something dropped from the ceiling. The heel of a boot jabbed into Dib's back as Tak landed, popping up once more on her spider legs. As MiMi had done earlier, GIR opened the top of his head and faced several large laser guns at Tak. He fired. Tak dropped to the ground, lashing one of her spider legs at GIR.

GIR blocked he PAK leg but Alt.-Tak took advantage of his loosened grip and slipped away. She immediately sprang at Dib. Dib rolled to the side; Alt.-Tak shot out her own PAK legs and stabbed one down at his head. He jerked away, and the tip of the leg splintered when it smashed into the tiled floor.

"Tak, you can't do this!" Dib propped himself up on his hands and yelled at the real Tak, who was still fighting against GIR. "This is insane!"

Tak glared at him. " _Zim…_  and  _you_ … you were  _both_  supposed to die!" she said.

Alt.-Tak swung one of her spider legs up. The edge of it caught Dib's middle and slammed him into the wall, holding him there. He slid down until the leg was nearly pressing against his throat. He pushed against it and managed to keep it from strangling him. "Tak! I—" He what?

"We should've known using you as the stabilizing mind for the alternate universe would never work," Alt.-Tak growled. " _Your_  hideously large and deformed mind was too powerful. You  _projected_  yourself into the dimension without even realizing it."

Dib stared. "Huh?"

"Yes, that wasn't really you running around in the other dimension," Tak said in distaste. She was holding GIR at an arm's distance, by his antenna. He flailed around in an effort to get away from her, then his eyes faded back to his usual turquoise color. "That was fun!"

Tak looked over at Dib. "None of your electronics worked over there, did they? And I believe you made contact with your Alternate. And you didn't die. It wasn't actually you, it was just a projection. You were stashed away in the alternate Massive the entire time."

Dib looked from Alt.-Tak to Tak, breathing ragged, with no idea at the moment of what to make of this. He'd have to think about it later. If there  _was_  a later. "What… what happened to Gaz and Zim?" he asked, dismayed to hear his voice shaking a bit.

"We'll take care of them shortly," Tak said in a clipped tone. "Zim is severely weakened by the poison. He's no match for me. You and your sister will soon be mindless slaves… of the Empire."

Her voice faltered. Dib blinked and stared at her.

"Tak… you're not really up for all this, are you," he said.

The PAK leg pulled away. Dib's feet slammed into the ground and he fell to his knees, unable to stand before Alt.-Tak planted a savage kick in his side. He gasped with pain and fell over, scrambling away.

"That's enough!" Tak said while Alt.-Tak took hold of Dib's coat collar and pulled him to his feet. "Yes, Dib, I  _am_  'up for all this.' I have to be. My loyalty lies with the Empire. In essence, there are only two races in the universe. The Irkens, and the slaves."

"That's awful! And stupid!" Dib protested.

Tak made an expression that looked like she was trying to raise a nonexistent eyebrow. "Really, Dib? I've done my research. According to your history, humans are much the same. And with your own kind."

"Well… but… it's still awful," Dib said. Tak didn't answer. She opened a slot in GIR's head and pressed a button. GIR's eyes went dark and he hung limply. Tak dropped him in the teleporter and pulled a lever—electricity flashed, and GIR's still body disappeared.

"He won't be any more trouble," Tak said.

"And the big-headed boy?" Alt.-Tak asked. Dib scowled at the epithet.

Tak clasped her hands behind her back and marched forward down the corridor. "It doesn't matter. He'll lose his memory in a matter of minutes, anyway." Alt.-Tak started to follow. Dib steeled himself. If he was to escape, he would have one chance to do it. He'd never be able to get Alt.-Tak through the portal now… Maybe instead, he could…

They made it back to the other room, with Alt.-Tak still gripping Dib's collar, just as the sun began to rise down on Earth.

A terrible force pressed against Dib's mind and he took a rasping breath, squeezing his eyes shut. He pressed his hands to his ears but it did nothing to quell the horrible, horrible pounding in his head. He sank to his knees and, with every ounce of his strength, opened his eyes to slits. The world was a blurred mess of ugly colors. Had his glasses fallen off? Did it… matter? It was too late now, far too late; he struggled to retain his hold on conscious thought, but was quickly losing the battle.

Alt.-Tak released her grip on his collar but he barely noticed. A clawed hand was reaching into his mind, plucking his memories, and his thoughts, and shredding them. A red haze descended over the world.

"Hey! What have you done to the stink-creatures?" a faint voice said. Dib thought he should recognize the voice. But he couldn't concentrate hard enough to figure out who's it was.

There was a girl next to him who seemed to be in the same predicament that he was. Her hair was purple, a little unkempt but still oddly shaped… she was wearing a black raincoat… and she looked so familiar. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, but for the life of him he couldn't recall it… he supposed it didn't matter anyway, he was going to die… right here, right now, he was going to die.

"I didn't," the girl hissed, her teeth clenched. "I didn't… come… all this way… just… to end up… like this!"

Amazingly, she pulled herself to her feet. Dib sucked in a breath. The girl staggered forward. She lurched, and her hands pushed Alt.-Tak. The Alternate must have been caught off-guard. She lost her balance and crashed into Tak.

Both Taks toppled to the ground… and they both began to glow.


	13. Luck

A/N: Well... I'm rather disappointed with this chapter. This story has proven really difficult to try to finish. Thank you for the reviews, guys, and I hope this chapter is okay anyway...

* * *

" _NO!_ "

The shriek rent through the air, piercing the last of Dib's nerves not ravaged by the terrible claw that was ripping through his memories. Tak struggled away from her Alternate. But it was no good, Dib could see it was no good, even in the state he was in.

The alien was glowing. It looked familiar, horribly familiar, it had… it had happened to  _him_  before, hadn't it…

"Tak?" Dib said. The word came out in a rasp.

Alternate-Tak, merely a shell almost totally controlled by her real-world counterpart, crumpled into a ball on the ground. The claw tearing at Dib's mind released its pressure and he found he could breathe again.

The little girl next to him—Gaz, Gaz, her name was Gaz, how could he have forgotten Gaz's name but remembered Tak's?—groaned and clutched her head. Then she shook it off and looked at Dib. "You okay?"

"I—yeah," Dib said. His heart was pounding.

Tak crossed her arms over her chest and gripped her shoulders, and she sank to her knees. "I was  _so close_."

Alarm flooded through Dib and he took a step forward. "Tak! You're going to—"

Tak's arm flashed out and she caught his wrist in a vice-like, two-fingered grip. "Come with me."

Before Dib could respond she let go of him and stood back up, heading off at a brisk pace toward one of the corridors. Dib glanced at Gaz and Zim. The alien looked like he was still trying to collect his thoughts and figure out exactly what was going on.

"I guess we've won," Gaz said.

"DIB!" Tak shouted. There was an urgent, almost panicked edge to her voice.

One of her robotic spider legs protruded from her PAK and a white laser fired straight at Dib.

"Nyah!" Dib ducked, his heart pounding.

"I guess you should go see what she wants," Gaz said. Dib glanced from her to Zim. Gaz would be all right. She could take care of herself, especially against Zim. He turned and reluctantly started to follow Tak.

The female Irken led him down the corridor at a trot and then at a full-out sprint complete with robotic spider legs. Dib chased after her as best he could, all other thoughts becoming overpowered by the knowledge that Tak was glowing brighter and brighter.

Tak skittered to a halt in front of a doorway and swung inside, the spider legs retracting again. She didn't have time to regain her balance on the slick floor and her feet shot out from under her, sending her crashing to the ground.

"There's no time!" Tak hopped to her feet just as Dib reached her. When he saw what was in the room, he stumbled backwards. It was a machine that looked exactly like the one he had been kept in in the other dimension. Tak ran over to it and hit some buttons under the screen. Then she turned and looked at Dib. "I need you to do something for me."

Dib started forward. "Tak, why did you—"

"SILENCE!" Tak slammed her hand on one last button and then went to the front of the machine, where a series of green laser lights sprang into existence and began to rotate. "This machine saved _you_  when you should have been obliterated, and now it's my only chance. Munepullium could help but thanks to my  _alternate-self_ ," she clenched her fists, "it's gone."

Dib reached into his pocket and fingered the one remaining tube of the silver liquid that had cured him and Zim.

"Tak—" he started to say.

"Hit the button!" Tak said.

"Tak, I have—"

" _Hit the button!_ "

Dib jumped and frantically scanned the control pad for a moment before pressing his finger to one of the buttons.

Tak gave him a long look. She closed her eyes.

"Thank you, Dib," she said. "Take care of MiMi."

But… MiMi had been killed by Gaz. She didn't know…?

Tak's feet left the ground and she folded her hands together, her eyes sliding closed. Her antennae fell limp against her head. She stopped glowing but didn't twitch, her only movement being the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest. She was still breathing.

There were monitoring levels on the control pad; they dropped far down into the red. Dib had saved Tak's life.

But she was still gone.

He signed. He shouldn't… he shouldn't feel  _sorry_ for her. She'd almost killed him,  _and_  Gaz. She would have wiped the minds of every creature and provided an easy path to Irken conquest. But she'd done it because her life was ruined… and was a fate like this really any better than death? Caught forever in dreams, memories, and fantasies? Dib would have ended up like that, if not for Gaz. And the only thing that had saved him in the first place was the fact that his mind had been powerful enough for him to project himself into the alternate universe without realizing it. It was his projection that had been obliterated. Tak saving her own life this way had been something of a long shot, she must have known that.

Dib backed away from the machine and turned. He had no intention to look at the thing again.

Hm… he still felt weak. He pulled out the very last tube of Munepullium, the one that he had been trying to tell Tak about, and stared at it. Then he drank it in one gulp.

* * *

"My Tallest, I have once again stopped Tak's plan!" Zim saluted the Almighty Tallest, who were still projected on the screen. "She actually stole that plan from me. That's why I was, eh, building the portal, y'see. My apologies for her bothering you. I didn't know she was using my space station."

"Yes… Irk forbid an Invader should call and  _bother_  us," Tallest Red drawled.

"Are we done yet?" Tallest Purple asked. "I'm hungry." Red shrugged. The screen fizzed out into static, which disappeared and the screen became a window again. Zim gripped the edge of his glove and pulled it down to look at his wrist. The skin of his arm, which had been turning grayish, was fading back to green. That was a relief.

"MASTER! You're okay!" GIR slammed into Zim and barreled him over once more. He groaned and pulled himself back upright. Irk, he was probably starting to get nasty bruises from GIR's greetings.

"Yes, GIR, the dreadful poison has been eradicated," he said, brushing himself off.

"Now you can buy me tacos! Filled with mice!"

"Later, perhaps," Zim said.

Dib's creepy sister, Gaz, walked up to them. She was holding a SIR Unit's head; the eyes were blank, and the neck was still sparking. Zim yelped and jumped away.

"Hey," Gaz said. "Want a souvenir?" She thrust the head at Zim who, unsure what else to do, took it. It was MiMi's. Zim swallowed and set the head to the side, facing the dead eyes away from him.

Dib appeared from the darkness of one of the corridors and wandered over. He looked at them, his eyes strangely empty. "Tak's gone," he said.

"Good riddance," Zim said. He scrunched up his face in distaste. "I'm never using this place again. It's  _tainted_." In fact, he would make sure to wreck the teleporters again… and this time make sure that they  _stayed_  wrecked. He didn't need more people like TAK coming and going to his base from this station.

Dib took a breath and nudged Gaz's arm. "We better get out of here before he breaks the teleporters again and traps us," he said quietly.

"You just  _won't_  get that thought out of your  _head_ ," Gaz growled.

"Just c'mon," Dib said. Knowing Gaz would follow him but would refuse to be pulled, he let go of her and ran quietly back to the teleporters at the back of the room before glancing back.

Zim was still staring at the viewscreen window, at the emptiness of outer space beyond, wringing his gloved hands with his one antenna slicked back against his head. He reached up with one finger and ran it down the length of the stump of his missing antenna. It seemed to be a little longer than Dib had last seen it a few hours ago. Those things must grow back fast.

Dib slipped into the teleporter once more. Electricity flashed around him and he blinked. His surroundings had changed to the slightly more-familiar interior of Zim's lab. Dib stepped out of the teleporter and Gaz appeared behind him.

[Intruder alert,] the computer said. Gaz gave the ceiling a look that chilled Dib's spine. The computer, apparently taking the hint, said nothing else.

It occurred to Dib that he should break the teleporters  _himself_ to trap Zim and GIR in the space station (assuming he hadn't replaced the escape pods from the Bloaty's Pizza Hog escapade... And knowing Zim, he hadn't). He should also be taking pictures of Zim's base. No, wait, he didn't have the camera. Never mind.

Gaz left him alone and headed to the base's elevator by herself. How did she even know where it was? …Zim must have showed her. Dib wished he knew what had been happening while he was trapped by Tak in the other dimension. Speaking of which…

The portal was gone. Dib stared at the space where it had been. The other dimension hadn't been all bad, he supposed, when Tak was out of the picture. He hoped Tak's dormant mind would keep it from crumbling. Kill two birds with one stone, as the phrase went.

"Coming?" Gaz said from the elevator. For once she didn't sound hostile. Dib felt his feet move him to the elevator where he joined Gaz and stood in silence.

[Going up,] the computer said. Light, peppy music started playing from the speakers as the elevator rose. Dib gave the speakers an odd look. Huh! Not really the type of thing he would have expected in the lair of an evil space monster from space. Strange…

Luckily the elevator brought them up through the floor under a little table that lifted up, rather than through the toilet in the kitchen. That was a relief. And the house looked so  _normal_ , too.

…Well, "normal" as in, how it usually looked. Not normal as in what actual humans would actually live in, no matter what Zim thought to the contrary.

"So… what now?" Dib stopped in the living room. "We just… go home?"

"That was the idea," Gaz said. "I didn't sleep at all last night. I'm going home and going to bed, so  _don't_  disturb me."

Dib looked out one of the windows by the door and started—it was light outside. Skool would be starting soon if it hadn't already.

Gaz glanced at him. "You should go to bed, too. You had an even worse night than  _I_  did." Then she headed out the front door and slammed it closed behind her.

A sudden noise behind him caused Dib to whirl around. Zim was rising up in the elevator with a sour look on his face. The deactivated GIR was clutched in his arms and he slouched into the room, hardly seeming to notice Dib. And he wasn't wearing his disguise. He was up here in the house without his disguise. And Dib didn't have his camera… typical.

Zim extended the spider legs from his PAK and shakily levered himself onto the couch with them, dumping GIR next to him. He glared at the floor. "Still hard to control," he muttered. Dib figured he was talking about his PAK legs.

Dib stared at Zim awkwardly, poised to leave the house fast if the need arose. Zim just rubbed at his antenna again.

"So… what did you do with the space station?" Dib asked. He probably shouldn't have said anything. Zim seemed so oblivious to his being there that he probably could have left without any trouble. Now, though—

"Destroyed the teleporters again." Zim waved his hand a little. " _No_   _one_  can use them now, ever again."

Dib blinked. "Oh. Well… that's good, because—"

" _Tak_  hypmo— _hypnotizing_  the Tallest into wanting to kill me," Zim growled with eyes narrowed in fury, not paying any attention to Dib. "TREASON!  _Treason_."

Dib stumbled over his own words and fell silent. Uh, never mind about telling Zim that Tak was comatose in his space station. It seemed Zim was never planning to return there again; best to just let that subject be.

Zim blinked and looked up suddenly, staring at Dib with a blank expression. He blinked again. "HEY! What are you doing here?!"

Dib turned and ran for the door.

"Begone with you!" Zim shouted, hopping down off the couch. "Computer! Intruder! There's an intruder!"

[Yeah, it took you long enough,] the computer said. Dib flung himself through the door and slammed it closed behind him again before he heard Zim's reply. He sprinted down the front walk, slowing only when he passed through the gap in the fence and ended up on the road. Out of enemy territory, back onto neutral ground. He looked for a long time at Zim's house. The alien's face appeared at the window, buggy red eyes and all, and glanced around, then disappeared again.

Dib sighed and headed home.

Maybe he'd be lucky enough to get a bit of a break before the next universe-threatening catastrophe befell him.

* * *

"GIR, analyze." Zim stripped his hand of his glove and held it out to GIR.

"Yes! My master!" GIR, whom Zim had reactivated a minute ago, saluted, eyes glowing red. He scanned down Zim's arm. "Sir! Poison is eighty-five percent eradicated from your system. Estimated time for you to be at full health again: three hours."

"Excellent." Zim pulled his glove back on.

GIR's eyes faded back to teal. "We gonna go get the cooties now?"

"NO!" Zim shook his head. "Forget the cootie plan! No more portals. We're doing something else." He wandered into the kitchen, opening the fridge and taking out a pack of Irken brand Dip-Stix. He went back into the living room, flopped onto the couch, and ripped open the pack. "Eh, later. Later we'll do something else. I need to recuperate."

GIR jumped up next to him. "OOH! I want some! Can I has blue? I never gets blue!"

Wearily Zim turned the package so the blue section was facing GIR. The little robot eagerly licked the sugar stick that came with the package and dipped it in the blue powder. Zim rolled his own sugar stick in his fingers thoughtfully. Maybe he didn't  _have_  to think up another plan today. He'd nearly been poisoned, after all. And Skool was right out. He fiddled with the stump of his missing antennae and yawned.

"GIR, guard the house," he drawled. Then he keeled over onto his side, allowing his mind to shut down and drift off into a sleep-like state.

He was home, finally. No more chasing after Gaz or Dib or GIR or trying to survive Tak's horrible poison.

He could relax. He'd earned it. And GIR had, too.


	14. Epilogue

_Rap rap rap_.

Pause.

 _Rapraprap_.

The knocking at the door grew more urgent. Dib looked up from his laptop. "Who could  _that_  be?"

He was talking to himself. Gaz had gone to bed and he was alone in the room.

"Open the door or I'll laser it open!" a kind-of-muffled-but-still-irritatingly-loud voice shouted from outside. Dib sighed. Well, that answered that question. He closed his laptop (hoping that wouldn't affect the email he'd been typing to his dad), set it down, and made his way over to the front door.

"What do you want, Zim?" he asked wearily when he opened the door to find the alien standing there. He blinked. "And how'd you make it past Dad's security system?"

"What security system?" Zim demanded. He was wearing his toupee and contact lenses again. As far as Dib knew, Zim's disguise had been left up in the space station, so these must be new. The Irken was looking considerably better than he had a few hours earlier, when they had finally made it off the space station.

Zim didn't wait for an invitation, instead shoving past Dib and entering the house. "I have been completely cured of that poison, in case you were wondering,  _Dib-thing_. You can no longer use it against me."

"That's great, Zim," Dib said. He didn't close the door in the vague hope that Zim would turn around and leave. "Look, I'm exhausted and I still need to finish an email and write an account of this whole… alternate dimension-thing. Can't we talk tomorrow?"

"Exhausted? You mean you're weak!" Zim whirled around with a stupid smirk on his face, his hands balled into fists. " _Hah_ , frail  _Earth_ bodies. With you out of commission there will be no one to stop me from—"

Dib folded his arms. "Is  _this_  what you came over here for?"

"Eh…" Zim trailed off and his arms fell to his sides. Then he stood up ramrod straight with his hands behind his back. "During my poison-induced state of… eh…"

"Obliviousness? Uselessness?" Dib supplied.

Zim narrowed his eyes. "I had plenty of time to think, and I came to the conclusion that the events of last night may have been a little bit… my own fault."

"Excuse me?" Dib raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Zim was blaming… himself? Had that  _ever_  happened before?

"Yes, as impossible as it may seem," Zim said, closing his eyes and pressing the fingers of one hand to his chest, "There are rare times when an Invader makes a mistake, although we do learn from them. And in hindsight, perhaps I may have slightly miscalculated—"

"You're the one who  _built_  the portal!" Dib shouted.

"I didn't mean for it to go to another dimension with other versions of…  _us!_ " Zim snapped, gesticulating wildly. "It was supposed to lead to a dimension filled with cooties!"

Dib groaned.

"Anyway," Zim said, regaining his composure, "I received a message about an hour ago. Considering we were both subjected to HORRIBLE ordeals in that HORRIBLE universe where everyone had a horrifying twin, I believed I had a duty to share it with you."

Suddenly curious, Dib stepped forward. "A message? From who?"

The Irken flicked his hand a little and looked entirely disinterested. "From those… people. In the other universe."

A screen extended out of his PAK on a metal arm (how did that even fit in there?) and hung suspended in front of Zim's face. The screen crackled with static for a moment before focusing on a close-up of… Zim's reddish-pink alien eye. Dib recoiled.

The Zim onscreen backed away, smiling hugely, and Dib saw that he was wearing a white tunic from the other dimension rather than Zim's normal pink uniform. It was Alternate-Zim.

"I think it's working!" the alternate dimension Irken exclaimed.

"Really?" Alternate-Gaz stepped into view, also beaming. She waved vigorously. "Hi! I can't see you, but hi!" The two of them looked like they were standing in front of the field where the giant Irken ship, the Massive, had stood. Actually the field didn't look any different, since before the Massive had exploded it had been invisible anyway.

Dib shook his head. He was getting off-track.

"Greetings from another dimension!" Alt.-Zim was saying. "Alternate-dimension me, Gaz," he took Alt.-Gaz's hand, "Dib, and that… that weird little robot of yours, I guess, him too, I just wanted to say that… whatever you did, the entire world is back to normal!"

"The universe was  _crumbling_ …" Alt.-Gaz said, wide-eyed. "After you left we were still standing by Skoodge's house, with the portal, and it almost _fell_  on us…"

"But you did something, and fixed everything!" Alt.-Zim said. "We can't thank you enough!" He peered at them. Or the camera, rather, and said, "Hey, wait… is this thing even on? I can't tell if it's recording or not."

Alt-Gaz went up really close to the camera and tapped it. "We're getting a really bad reception," she said. Then she raised her voice and shouted to it. "If you can hear us, thank you! I think this thing might break up at any ti—"

The transmission dissolved into static once more. Zim sucked the screen back into his PAK. "That's where it ends," he said.

"So they ended up all right!" Dib said, unable to keep from grinning. "I was hoping that they would be… when Tak's plan failed…"

Zim squinted at him. "I don't have any other business here, Dib-filth. I have to—" He looked around suddenly and winced. "Hey, it  _reeks_  in here. Human houses always smell! How do you  _stand_ it?"

Dib rolled his eyes slightly. "Our inferior noses don't notice it," he said flatly.

Zim nodded, accepting this answer without comment. "I have to get back to the base and make sure GIR hasn't wrecked it," he said, and pushed past Dib again to get out the door. Without any other jibing taunts. Without any threats.

"Wait, Zim," Dib said, putting out his hand. "So… truce? For today?"

The alien stopped on the doormat, body tense. Then he turned his head and glared over his shoulder. "For today, Dib. We'll have a truce for today."

He marched off, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

_8:39 P.M._

_It's crazy how much can happen in one night and how much can change. Or maybe nothing really changed at all? All I know is that I saved Gaz's life, and in return she saved mine… and Zim put the blame on_ himself _for once. Well, sort of. I'd say that counts as at least something really unusual for Zim, since he always blames everyone EXCEPT himself. I was trapped in an alternate dimension (which is why I haven't been writing, by the way). I won't be able to take down a full account in this journal because I've already been hard at work on one ever since I got back home… my hand feels like it might fall off any minute. That… probably won't actually happen… but, you know. It doesn't feel like I'm exaggerating. Maybe I should stop rambling to myself in this thing._

_Gaz and I didn't go to Skool today. Too much happened last night, you know? Dad's still not home. Apparently he came back last night before Gaz went into the other dimension, but he left again. I guess he'll never know about this. Zim came by earlier, with a message from the_

**Ping**.

_alternate dimension. They survived after all—I'm glad. The Alternates weren't all that bad, really. Maybe just a little annoying. They weren't_

**Ping**.

"Gaz," Dib sighed, exasperated.

Gaz glanced up from her game at him. Around noon, she had come back downstairs without saying a word and just started playing her Game Slave. Now, she raised an eyebrow and said, "Writing again?"

"Well, I was trying to."

"Fine, knock yourself out." Gaz closed her game and put it on the table, picking up a book instead and flipping to a bookmarked page. The room was quiet once more—not even the TV was on.

Dib scribbled down a few more thoughts in his notebook. Then he paused. "Hey… Gaz? …Thanks."

He wasn't just talking about her stopping her video game so he could write. He was talking about everything… including everything that had happened last night in the alternate dimension.  _Especially_  that.

Gaz turned the page of her book. "You too, Dib." She stood up and closed the book. "Thanks."

She went around the couch and started towards the kitchen, then turned and looked back. "Just don't ever mention this again. Got it?"

"Got it," Dib replied. He watched his sister pull out a soda from the fridge and gulp down half of it.

There wasn't much he could say about the alternate dimension to anyone, after all, he mused. No one would ever believe him, anyway. Certainly not his dad.

He finished off the entry in his notebook, closed it, and tucked it into his trenchcoat pocket. Then he leaned back and just… relaxed.

The universe was saved from the Irkens, Gaz wasn't growling at him, he didn't have to worry about Zim for the rest of the day…

…It was… nice.

Yeah.

It was nice.

* * *

A/N: It's over! Thank you so much for reading, everyone! This was my first Invader Zim fanfiction and I think it's the first multi-chaptered thing I've ever finished. I can't believe it! Again, thank you, I could never have done this without you!


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